Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

*

It was 5:37 in the morning when the phone rang. Since only a couple of people even knew he had a phone and none of them seemed like they would have called him at that hour just for funsies, Bruce rolled over and picked the phone up off the cardboard box beside the bed. Caller ID said Steve. “Hey,” Bruce said, still groggy.

There was a roaring sound over the phone. “Sorry, I’m on my bike,” Steve said, road noises in the background. “Can you get dressed and be ready for pick-up on the street in twelve minutes?”

“Okay,” said Bruce, because it was Steve.

“Thanks,” Steve said. “I don’t need the Hulk. See you in twelve.”

Bruce started getting ready, which really would have taken all of two and a half minutes, except he took his time. Waiting around made him anxious. It must be an emergency, and Bruce tried to remember whether this was why he was living in New York. He wasn’t an Avenger, but he’d defused a bomb in March and that was okay; he’d turned Steve, Pepper, and Tony into twelve-year-olds in May and that wasn’t so okay.

It had been three hundred and seventy-one days since his last incident, but who was counting, and even though he’d been living in New York for about eighteen weeks he still had this irrational fear that someone would ask him to do something about it. Like there would be ninjas or Natasha would get into trouble—for real this time; I’m always in trouble, she had told him once, but what if she really did; he didn’t know what he would do, and who was he kidding. If Steve had called and said I do need the Hulk, Bruce might have said I will be your army.

Not in so many words. The Hulk couldn’t even have managed stringing together those five (he could do subject and verb; direct objects were beyond him), and Bruce would never say it later because he’d hate Steve forever for asking. But Bruce might still have done it. The question was whether Steve would ever betray him in that way.

(The answer was yes.)

One problem with living in New York was that apparently you couldn’t very well have an apartment with a bathroom that didn’t also have a mirror, and as Bruce shaved he told himself that it wasn’t really fair to condemn Steve for placing the livelihood of almost eight billion people above the neurotic phobia of one man who was kind of an asshole anyway.

‘Neurotic phobia’ was probably what Tony would have called it, had he been less . . . kind, and Bruce was betting that was not an adjective that modified the noun ‘Tony Stark’ very frequently, but it was true. Tony had been sort of unbearably gentle with him, more than once. No doubt Tony felt like Bruce was throwing that back in his face, but Bruce’s concern wasn’t a neurotic phobia. It was a very real issue, because it was very possible that Steve might decide the Hulk was worth it if he thought it could save lives, which some people—some very kind people—seemed to completely and whole-heartedly believe.

Get a grip, Banner. He said he wasn’t going to ask you.

Not today, anyway.

Bruce carefully washed his razor, then put it on the sink, and went down to the street. Steve was just rolling up on his bike, which was excellent timing when you considered that it had actually been a lot more like sixteen minutes than the twelve Steve had told him. Bruce was always rather chronically late, but for some reason he had thought that Steve was the punctual type.

“Can you come with me to Stark Tower?” Steve said, soon as he stopped beside the curb.

There was a leather bag attached to the back of the bike, just about the right size and shape for Captain America’s shield. A half a dozen sarcastic replies occurred to Bruce just then and all of them were no, so Bruce just looked at him and said, “Okay,” because Steve wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t important. He’d said he didn’t need the Hulk.

“Thank you,” said Steve.

Bruce wanted to ask him if the bike was really necessary, but Steve knew that he didn’t like the bike, so of course it was. Bruce got on behind him, and Steve was driving before Bruce could even put his arm around Steve’s torso, which wasn’t very much like Steve.

“I’m repeating the same day over and over,” Steve yelled over the roar of the engine. Bruce was going to say what, but instead Steve said, “I said, I’m repeating the same day over and over.”

Bruce was going to tell him that wasn’t possible, but Steve said, “I know it sounds impossible, but Stark tested it with a random number generator. He said it depends on when you take the test, so he fed JARVIS this seed to output control variables; every day it was the same seed, so I could always tell him the numbers. He calls it a zero-knowledge proof.”

That was . . . crazy. Also—

“Here’s another zero-knowledge proof,” Steve yelled. “It takes me fifteen and a half minutes to get to your place. If I tell you fifteen and a half, you take nineteen; if I tell you eight you take eleven and then you have to wait. Waiting makes you nervous. Even though I told you I didn’t need the Hulk, you still thought about it, but I don’t think you have a neurotic phobia. You’re right that I would put the well-being of eight billion people over one man, but the issue is more complex than that. Your objections are rational and moral, and they concern me deeply.”

Bruce opened his mouth.

“No,” said Steve. “I’m sure this isn’t telepathy. You told me all of that so that I could prove it to you.”

Bruce shut his mouth.

“You, Stark, Pepper, and Jane are helping me,” Steve said. “I’m going to need to go through all of this again with Tony, and it’s difficult to get into the specifics if I have to yell them, so let’s wait for the rest until we get there.”

Bruce thought about saying okay again, but Steve must have already known that it was okay. Steve already knew a bunch of things, apparently, and yet Bruce’s brain kept stumbling over there must be another explanation as though it was a stone in his path. Steve could be . . . going crazy, he supposed; mind-reading, that was what Tony had been working on; that was why Bruce had come to New York . . . but even if Steve could read minds, it wasn’t as though he’d use it to pull a stunt like this.

If Steve was experiencing the same day over and over—first of all, there was a an episode of Next Generation like that. In the episode, there was something about a temporal distortion in the space time continuum. Blowing up the Enterprise caught them in the loop; all they had to do was not blow up the Enterprise to get out. Data had figured it out.

Second of all, magic. People said Asgardians used magic, but of course they didn’t, not really. The Tesseract wasn’t magic; Loki’s scepter hadn’t been magic; not even Thor’s hammer was magic; it just looked like it was because the technology was so advanced. Bruce was pretty sure that not even Thor knew how his own hammer worked, but it wasn’t like Bruce hadn’t thought about it.

He’d thought about it when Tony had regressed into a twelve-year-old. Tony had been tinkering with the device that had held the Tesseract and opened up the portal for the Chitauri attack. He called it the Flux Accelerator. When they’d all been turned into adults again, Bruce had argued with Tony for messing with things they didn’t understand. Again. Then Bruce had left on bad terms. Again. He hadn’t seen Tony since then, except once on television in the shitty bar where Bruce sometimes got French fries.

Basically, going to Stark Tower and fixing Steve’s problem sounded sort of like a nightmare, except that Bruce had always wanted to be Data. Star Trek was basically the only television show Bruce had ever really watched; he’d actually spent a good chunk of his twenties pretending he was Data. Without the emotion chip.

Great. This was going to be a lot of fun.

*

Steve parked in the garage under the Tower, and they got off. “Please don’t blame Stark,” Steve said, grabbing the leather bag off the back of the bike. “It’s not his fault.”

Bruce was still busy being relieved that he wasn’t on the bike anymore, so Steve’s words hit him right in the gut. He must have blamed Tony another day. It sort of sounded like something he would do.

Steve was looking down at him as they walked through the garage toward the elevator. When Bruce glanced up, he looked away. “What you do and say changes more than other people.” Bruce was going to ask him what he meant, when Steve went on, “I mean that I think you, Tony, and Jane are close to solving the problem, so for the past fifty days or so, I’ve been doing and saying a lot of the exact same things to keep us going in the same direction. But I’ve noticed that if I say something different to you, you act differently, and not just in direct response to my words.”

They got into the elevator, and Steve pressed the button for the forty-ninth floor. “Tony and Jane end up doing and saying a lot of the same things, even if I change what I say or do. But when I say something to you or Pepper, you must really think about it, because it has a long-lasting effect.”

Bruce raised his brows.

“No,” Steve said, “you’re right. I don’t think Tony would be pleased to hear that he’s predictable, but I only ever told him this once. It did have a long-lasting effect. I didn’t particularly care for it. He’s easier to handle when he’s predictable.”

Bruce pressed his lips together.

“And no,” Steve said, “I don’t think he’d care to hear he’s easy to handle either.”

Bruce wondered—

“Yes.” Steve glanced at him. “I always tell you this, because it changes you even more. Before you ask, you’re kinder to him. More careful. Which is saying something.”

The elevator dinged and Steve stepped out, Bruce following. “You know what the amazing thing is?” Bruce said, falling into step beside him.

“Yes,” Steve said, smiling down at him. “And you’re right, it’s not just a habit with me.”

Bruce had been going to tell him that the amazing thing was that Steve said it had been one-hundred-and-six days, and he was still saying things like ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’

Steve opened the door to the lab, and they went inside.

*

Tony walked over with a mug in his hand. Steve must have called him, Bruce guessed. Tony didn’t really seem like the type of person to be up and dressed at six in the morning, and he didn’t look all that surprised to see either of them.

“Hey,” Tony said. “How’s—”

“I’m repeating the same day over and over,” Steve said. “Yes, like that episode of Star Trek. You’ve used a random number generator to test it over a dozen times. Since it depends on when you take the test, you fed JARVIS a specific seed to output control variables; every day you use the same seed, so I can tell you all the numbers. I know it’s called a zero-knowledge proof—”

Tony opened his mouth.

“No, this isn’t a joke,” said Steve.

Tony closed it.

Steve went on. “You and Doctor Banner did a lot of tests, but there isn’t any kind of residue of whatever did this—particulate, radiation, or otherwise. On different days we’ve talked to Jane, and she thinks the best solution is to try to get Thor’s help. We know he’s capable of faster than light travel, since he must have used it when he came to fetch Loki, so we’re assuming he might have a higher understanding of temporal displacement.”

“Okay,” said Tony, “the idea of Thor—”

“I’m getting really tired of that joke,” said Steve.

Tony tilted his head. “You’re—”

“No fun,” said Steve. “I know.”

“Okay,” Tony said, and sipped his coffee. “What else?”

It occurred to Bruce just how much it probably unsettled Tony that Steve knew what he was going to say. Tony’s unpredictability was a shield just like basically everything else, and Steve finding him predictable probably left him feeling exposed.

Bruce felt a flood of pity, and wondered if this was what Steve meant about kindness.

“You’re using the Flux Accelerator,” Steve said, walking over to the holodesk. Tony followed him, not even glancing at Bruce, and Bruce went too. Steve started pulling out the volumetric images. “Basically, we’re attempting to use it for its original purpose, except this time, you’re not using the Tesseract, and we’re trying to get a signal out, instead of let the Chitauri in. We got Erik’s help on a lot of the other days. He didn’t just build this one.” Steve sorted through the images. “He built the one Thor used to take Loki back to Asgard.” He glanced up at Bruce. “Yeah, that was the same thing.”

Swallowing, Bruce wondered whether he had agreed to do this on other days. Steve certainly acted as though he had. That didn't actually mean anything, but Steve acting like he didn’t doubt him made it harder for Bruce to doubt himself.

“We’re trying to just send a beam of light, but Jane thinks Thor will notice something is happening here, even if we can’t get a coherent message through.” Steve turned to Tony. “The same way he noticed when the Tesseract let Loki through to Earth.” Steve looked down at the images lit up around him. “She doesn’t actually know.”

“Uh-huh,” said Tony.

“How Thor did it the first time,” Steve told Bruce, explaining the question Tony hadn’t asked. “Jane got the idea from you guys. You know the Flux Accelerator can fold space, and after what happened in March . . . you thought maybe it could fold time. We thought maybe that’s why I’m repeating—”

He meant that Bruce thought that.

“—and that maybe you could use the Flux Accelerator to . . . I don’t know.” Steve shrugged. “Jump start my day. But it was just too complicated, and without the Tesseract . . . Jane thought it’d be easier to get Thor’s attention. She thinks he might have a way to tell if some kind of space displacement is going on near Earth, and that’s how he found out what Loki was doing before.

“You’ve got all of the equations worked out,” said Steve. “I’ve got some of what you need to do to get started memorized; usually I repeat it all back to you over the next several hours while I get to work.” He glanced up. “I’d get pretty hoarse, if it weren’t for the serum. And no,” he added, smiling at Tony, “I haven’t really been getting my jollies just telling you what to do every day.”

Tony’s mouth twitched.

“And yes,” Steve said. “I know the mind-reading is freaky.”

Tony’s mouth twitched again.

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking right now,” Steve said, pulling out another image on the display, “and I won’t say it, because it’s filthy.”

Tony looked at him.

“And I won’t say that, either,” said Steve.

Tony went back to sipping coffee.

“Jane is on her way,” Steve said. “She was in Ohio with her family; it’ll be about four and a half more hours. I’m sorry, but please cancel the barbeque. You usually call Pepper and have her come over; she can help organize and order the supplies we need. Yes, I cancelled my TV appearance, and yes, it is some birthday.”

Because it was the Fourth of July, Bruce realized finally, and he’d read somewhere that that was Steve’s birthday. Bruce didn’t really get into holidays that much, especially not this one, but he’d completely forgotten, which was really rather shitty, seeing as how Steve was his best friend. Well, pretty much his only friend, unless you counted Natasha, which Bruce didn’t. Not yet.

“It’s okay, Doctor Banner,” Steve said, looking up from the display so that those same sad baby blues could wash over the length of him, then go back to the display. Tony didn’t look over, just went on sipping his coffee. “I think we almost did it, yesterday.”

“What happened?” Bruce asked.

Steve pulled apart another part of the display. “We ran out of time,” he said. “One of the problems is speed. The other problem is ingenuity. When we first started doing this, you built on your ideas from the day before each time. It’s easy for me to tell you your essential theories and equations, but once I tell you that, you’re onto the nitty gritty details. I can memorize a lot of that, but it’s hard for any of us to know what’s important. I could spend the whole day telling you every idea and fix you’ve had, but it won’t help you get anywhere. And I do let you get a word in edgewise,” Steve said, turning to Tony.

Feigning an expression of innocence, Tony mimed zipping his mouth closed.

“He gets tired of the exposition segment of the narrative,” Steve told Bruce. “I don’t think there’s much more to figure out,” Steve said. “I think that we can do it today, and no, I don’t say that every day.”

Bruce wasn’t sure which one of them the last comment was directed toward.

“We usually start with the basic geometry for the bridge. I’ve memorized some of the formulas. I can give them to you as you go along, while I prep the Flux Accelerator. After that, you—” Steve looked at Tony—“get started on gross mechanics, while you—” he looked at Bruce—“get started on the programming. On a good day, things are timed so that when Jane gets here, you two are working on orienting the bridge.” He looked back at Tony. “You and I work on modifying the Flux Accelerator.”

“Goody,” said Tony.

“What happens on a bad day?” said Bruce.

Steve smiled at him a little, and ignored the question. Turning to Tony instead, he said, “You’re going to ask about power. You came up with a solution for that. We’ll get to it in a little while. There’s some things on floor fifty-one we have to get.”

*

Tony had given Bruce a tour when Bruce had come back to New York and they’d decided to work on improving plumbing in the third world, but he’d skipped floor fifty-one. At the end of the corridor outside of the elevator, there was a door unlike most of the other doors in Stark Tower. It was solid and metal, with an electronic pad attached to the wall beside it. “Can you open it please?” Steve asked.

“Sure.” Tony stepped forward and leaned in for a retinal scan. They could all hear the lock release, then Tony opened the door. “Hope you’ve taken your chill pills,” he said, and went inside.

He certainly hadn’t meant the comment for Steve. It was the first thing Tony had said to him in two months.

Inside was another lab, in the midst of which was one of the Chitauri fliers. Bruce would lay money on the fact that behind the freezer door on the other end of the room was the body of an actual Chitauri. The body armor for one of the aliens was laid out very carefully on a lab bench.

“Please don’t say it,” Steve said quietly, and Bruce felt certain Steve was talking to him, because there were so many terrible things he wanted to say right now, but most of them were just so, so disappointed. Steve, however, was looking at Tony.

“Say what?” said Tony.

Bruce had suspected that this was somewhere in Stark Tower. The Flux Accelerator was practically proof; Bruce had been able to tell just by looking at it that the adjustments Tony had made to it had been riffing off of Chitauri technology. Bruce had also found schematics for the flier in JARVIS; he’d had to assume they couldn’t be that complete without access to an actual flier.

Even long before that, Bruce hadn’t been blind to the fact that Tony would do this. It was one of the main things they had argued about, when Bruce had left New York the last time. Tony had been arguing that they should study this stuff, and Bruce hadn’t been against it, exactly, because technology. Also, aliens. It wasn’t as though the Hulk invalidated scientific discovery; if anything, it made scientific discovery more important. Bruce just hadn’t liked the idea of studying those things on his own, because of what he could do with them, and he hadn’t like the idea of Tony doing it on his own either.

These things should be done with teams, checks, balances, regulations. “You want the military on this?” Tony had asked. “Really?”

Bruce had shaken his head.

“Then who do you want?” Tony had asked.

“The UN.”

“My God, but you’re naïve,” Tony had said.

It wasn’t that Bruce didn’t believe in private enterprise, either—or at least, he didn’t think that it was a completely bad thing. Just . . . these were weapons. Really, really dangerous weapons in the hands of a wealthy and very powerful man who had already proven again and again that he was willing to take the law into his own hands, and willing to take human lives if he deemed it necessary.

Bruce sort of wanted to throw up.

“The flier has some materials you’ll need,” Steve said. “Stark knows which ones they are. You’ll also need the transdimensional navigation system. That’s this thing right here.” Steve went over to the flier, and the same part of Bruce that had wanted to be Data longed to go and see, but he didn’t. Instead, his hand tightened into a fist, and he started touching his knuckles.

“I know it sounds really sci fi,” Steve said, “but Chitauri use crystals in a lot of their tech. I know you already figured that out; it’s for Bruce.” Tony was over there with Steve. “The coordinates for the Realms are actually programmed into the crystal. We need to hack it and use it to direct the signal to Asgard.”

“All in a day’s work,” said Tony.

“You’ve mostly got it worked out,” Steve said. “You and Doctor Banner are really brilliant together.” He came over toward Bruce, then stopped, looking at both of them. “You two can get to work extracting the navigation system. I’m going to get started entering a couple equations for you to use once you’re done here.” He squeezed Bruce’s arm as he passed. “Thanks again.” Then he was walking out the door.

You’re more careful. Steve had said that earlier because he’d already known this was going to happen. Steve wanted them to be able to work together, and he was a manipulative bastard. The thing about Tony was that he was very frank and direct; for all his walls, he was just so hopelessly transparent. Bruce always knew what Tony was asking of him, and knew that the answer would almost always be a no. Except right now, it had to be yes, because of Steve.

Goddamn Steve.

“He’s a piece of work,” Tony said, fiddling with something on the flier.

Bruce went over there, not really know what he was going to do. He didn’t know what anything on the flier was; there were plenty of parts that could be reactive or even explosive, so he didn’t know how to help. He didn’t particularly want to help—and yet, the sight of so many unknowns was making his skin prickle all over. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t even be looking at this.

“Daddy wants us to sort out our differences,” Tony said, twisting something on the flier that looked like a lever. “Don’t you wanna lay into me?”

“No,” Bruce said.

“That’s okay.” Abruptly, Tony let go of the lever and came around to the other side of the flier, where Bruce was standing. “I’ll be prescient, like Steve,” Tony said. “You’re going to call me irresponsible, because you love that word. You’re going to tell me that I was practically an arms dealer once, and that I said I’d learned better but I actually haven’t, have I.”

Tony started coming closer, that casual walk he had that was never casual, never non-aggressive. “Maybe you’ll bring up people I’ve killed or oh, I know, how I used a nuke on a sentient race. Want to know the worst part about that? Doesn’t even keep me up at night. Come on, Bruce.” Now he was close. Tony was really really close. “Give it to me,” he said. “I can take it.”

Bruce looked away. “Don’t.”

“You know you want to. Come on and tell me how I’m not the one who should get to decide what I do with my technology. Tell me how Iron Man is going to start another Cold War. Tell me how Stark Industries is the evil corporation in the film, who wants to study the aliens that are going to kill us all except Sigourney Weaver and her cat. Just tell me. I wanna hear.”

“Stop.”

“You have no fucking clue how much it turns me on when you just keep saying no. Know what I think? I think you secretly mean yes.” Bruce hadn’t thought Tony could get any closer without touching him, but he did. “I think you want me to convince you.”

Tony reached out then, but Bruce was half expecting it, and caught his hand. He didn’t know what Tony had been going to do, but Bruce held on.

“No, thanks.” Shaking him off, Tony took a neat step away. “I’m not the hand holding type.”

The problem was that Tony just took everything so goddamn personally. “I never meant to hurt you,” Bruce said, keeping his voice gentle.

“Hurt?” Tony barked a laugh. “Who’s hurt? No, this is just a difference of opinion. Just a philosophical discussion we’re having here, just like Steve wanted.”

“Steve’s doing his best.”

“Right. Because what the rest of us are doing is murder, with some war mongering thrown in.”

“I’ve never accused you of murder, Tony.”

“But it’s what you see, isn’t it? When you look at me. When you look at Iron Man you think: there is someone who hurts people.”

Bruce didn’t say anything, because when he looked at Iron Man, he saw someone who very much wanted to help people and usually succeeded—but only because he was willing to hurt people as well. Bruce had looked up that town in Afghanistan where Tony had been held captive. Everyone celebrated Tony as a hero there—except for four people who had died, and another who was badly disabled from the burns which had destroyed over sixty percent of his body.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Tony said, and turned away.

Bruce wanted to touch him. Touching wasn’t really his thing, but he wanted to—but Tony had already shaken him away, and Bruce didn’t know how to do it. “You’re doing your best too,” was all Bruce could think of to say.

“Right.” Tony walked to the flier, then turned back. “So, you’re thinking distortion in the continuum?”

“Tony.”

“Seriously, Bruce, I don’t give a fuck. Why Cap, though? Poor bastard. Could be the universe just hates the guy. I’d buy that; space-time could eddy around that stick in his ass. Still, if there was that kind of disturbance, you’d think we’d notice. So why is it just Steve? That’s the real question.”

Tony started fiddling with the lever again, and Bruce swallowed hard. “If it’s something he does, or something that triggers it,” Bruce suggested.

“If it was as simple as not blowing up the Enterprise, you’d think he would’ve figured it out by now. Wonder if we Fluxed him into the future, he could just skip today and have it over with.” Tony glanced up. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. I don’t think it’s a good idea either.”

Steve, damn him, had set it up this way. He’d given them a specific task, then left them alone to do it. He had to know that they would argue; he also had to know that they would get it done regardless. “He said you knew about the crystals?”

“Mostly icosahedrite,” Tony said, back to messing with the flier. “Or something a lot like it.”

“Quasicrystal,” said Bruce.

Tony glanced up. “Yeah.” Finally forcing the lever to the side, Tony slid open a compartment in the flier. Bruce hoped to God Tony knew what he was doing. “Haven’t gotten around to testing all of it,” Tony said. “There’s only so much, and—” He stopped whatever he was going to say, grimacing. “They’re photonic. Band structure probably translates to some kind of language or—” he twisted something inside the compartment—“code. But it’s a bitch computing aperiodic structures—” he twisted again, then put his face next to the compartment—“and you’re never gonna compute the whole lattice.”

Bruce thought about that. “I wonder if you could get the whole structure in a higher-dimensional unit cell.”

Tony glanced at him.

“I mean,” Bruce said quickly, because crystallography wasn’t really his thing, “assuming they took an irrational slice of a higher dimensional lattice.”

“Hold this.”

Bruce didn’t particularly want to hold anything from a Chitauri spaceship, but it was a test, just like practically everything Tony did was a test. Bruce put his hand out, and Tony put a device into it. Shaped like a disk, it was made out of some kind of gold-hued metal, with three finger-like jointed metal protrusions folded in toward the center. The center itself was three dull burgundy crystals arranged like a clover.

“Don’t drop it,” Tony said, then went back to messing around with the flier. “Just gonna—hold on, the way they do these panels is a bitch,” he said, yanking a long, gold piece of metal on the side of the flier. “Aliens ever heard of screws? Bring me that blowtorch.”

Swallowing again, Bruce looked around, because of course Tony had a blowtorch. Of course Tony had a blowtorch in this room of volatile things about which Tony could have no full understanding. It was lying on a bench a yard or so away, so Bruce held tightly onto the disk thing and went to get it. At least it was a little blowtorch, thank God, because Bruce didn’t much like fire. Bruce brought it to him and then when back for the goggles, and Tony took the tools without really looking, kneeling now to look at the side of the flier. “Gloves,” he said, so Bruce went to find those, too.

Tony put on the gear, then pressed the valve on the blowtorch, running it along the side of the plate where he wanted it to move. His gloved hand tried to wiggle the plate, but it didn’t shift.

“You know which episode I’m talking about, right?” Tony said suddenly, torching the plate again, then wiggling it. “We get to see Crusher in a negligee.”

“Wesley?” Bruce asked politely.

Snorting, Tony blasted the plate some more, wiggled it again.

“I always liked Data,” Bruce said.

Tony glanced at him, then went back to working on the plate. “You do know you’re Worf.”

Bruce smiled a little. “I know I’m Worf. But you’re kind of Riker. Sorry, man, you play trombone.”

“I’m not Riker.”

“Then who?”

“Whatever guy built Data. You know, the awesome one. Gimme a wrench.”

Bruce found a wrench and brought it over. Tony took it, gave the plate a solid thwack with it, and the plate came off. “Guessing Cap meant this.” He yanked something that looked like a shiny metal pipe out of the side of the flier. “Okay, dollface. We can leave the big scary room now.” He stood up.

“Tony,” Bruce said.

“I don’t wanna kiss and make up.” Tony thunked the pipe on the bench, then took off the gloves and goggles. “Let’s just go build some shit.”

“Tony,” Bruce said again, and grabbed his arm.

Tony stopped, slowly turned around. He was wearing a faded t-shirt with Bettie Paige on it, the light of the arc reactor shining through the line drawing of her mostly naked body. His hair was rumpled—more rumpled than usual, like he’d rolled out of bed when Steve called him and hadn’t done much else besides dress. There was stubble on his face around the beard, providing further evidence of just how long he’d been awake, but he didn’t look tired.

Being in a room with Tony sometimes made Bruce feel very dry, like standing in a field of broken, starving grass, and Tony was this snapped electric line, the metallic tang of lightning in a storm. It felt dangerous, oh so dangerous, and too exciting; right now, this second, Bruce felt it. He’d felt it just watching Tony take apart that flier and root around inside its guts, so completely without fear—Tony reaching inside those eighty thousand parts of machines that Bruce didn’t understand, but wanted to—the physics of it, the structure of the crystals, even the goddamn motors, and Bruce never cared about motors, but he just wanted to know; it made Bruce hungry in ways he’d forgotten that he could be hungry.

Bruce didn’t even know how to keep looking at him. He’d thought that Tony was the only man who could make him want to take risks he shouldn’t, and then he’d gotten to know Steve.

Thinking of Steve, Bruce said, “We can still be friends.”

“Too bad.” Tony took a step forward, too close all over again, and Bruce had to check the impulse to back up. “I want more from you than that.”

His eyes were bottomless.

“But you’re not going to give it to me,” Tony went on. “So what’s the point?” He scratched his chest. “Here’s the part that really throws me for a loop. Would you give it to Steve?”

Bruce thought of that morning, when he’d tried to decide what he would do if and when Steve said he needed the Hulk. When he had pretended to try to decide, even though he already knew.

Bruce looked down. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t get it. Is it because he asks nicely? Seriously, Bruce, is it that he bats those lashes at you, and you just—” Tony cut himself off so suddenly it was as though he’d clapped a hand over his mouth. “You just fucking give it up for him,” he said at last, after a long moment. “Everyone just fucking spreads, and why? Because Steve is nice. He’s so polite when he asks you to suck it.”

“Steve never asks me to suck it,” Bruce said quietly.

“He asked you to come here.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” Tony’s voice was bland. “Did you even hesitate, Bruce? You even once stop to contemplate your vows of chastity, or did you decide to give it up for king and country just because he asked?”

“He’s never asked for that.” Bruce lifted his gaze. “Ever, except for the one time I volunteered. That’s the difference, Tony.”

“Timing.” Tony scratched his chest again, the skin beside his arc reactor. “That’s the only difference. It’s only a matter of time. You don’t think that one day he’s gonna need just a little more firepower than even I can offer, and that on that day, he won’t turn to you? He’s Captain fucking America. Asking people to lay down for him is what he does. You know what the difference between you and everybody else is? When he asks you to lay down, you can get up again. That’s why you need to do it. That’s why you need to fight.”

The fact that the Hulk was virtually invincible was a big part of why Bruce felt he shouldn’t fight. It wasn’t as though he thought the things that Tony and Steve did were okay either, but at least they could be stopped with enough fire power, whereas . . . .

The problem was that Tony lived in this world where there were bad guys and good guys, where the only answer to the bad guys was violence, and the only violence that worked was the kind perpetrated by good guys who were so powerful that there wasn’t a check or balance in the world that could stand against them. The other problem was that maybe Tony was right.

Maybe they were all really living in that world, the world that Bruce had only assumed existed in fiction. For so much of his life, Bruce had been fairly certain he was living some post-modern drama in which there were no right answers, just ambiguity and shades of gray, but last year he’d fought aliens on tiny spaceships. Maybe the entire world had switched genres, and somehow he’d missed it.

Natasha said he had shitty taste in literature. Too much Kafka.

“Christ, why do I bother,” said Tony, and left.

Chapter Text

*

When they got back to the lab on the forty-ninth floor, Steve was over at the holodesk, writing on the volumetric displays with a stylus. It looked strangely incongruous—Bruce guessed he didn’t often see Steve look like he knew what he was doing around equipment that advanced. Without looking, Steve lifted his free hand and caught something flying through the air; Tony had tossed the pipe from the flier at his head.

As Bruce walked over to Steve with the disk, Tony said, “Hey.” He held his phone up to his ear. “You by any chance wearing a negligee?”

“It’s okay to just put it on the bench,” Steve said, so Bruce did. “There’s coffee over there.”

Bruce was familiar with Tony’s set-up from when they’d been designing the toilet, but the coffee pot was new. Bruce had probably broken the old one, he realized. A lot of the other equipment hadn’t been replaced—Bruce wasn’t sure why, because Tony could certainly afford it—but the coffee pot had apparently been essential. Bruce wondered if Tony still worked in here.

“Just jotting down some equations to get you guys started,” Steve said while Bruce poured himself the coffee, because Bruce had been going to ask what he was doing. “Pepper’s with her mom. They were going to come down for the barbeque. I went a couple times—to the barbeque, I mean. Did the Today Show the first day, obviously. Watched fireworks quite a few times.”

Bruce tried to imagine Steve, every goddamn day the same.

“It’s not that bad, Doctor Banner,” Steve said. “I’m fine.”

Bruce drank his coffee. Tony was on the other end of the room, talking on the phone.

“I know you didn’t have a good conversation with him,” Steve said. “I’m sorry. It always happens; it’s just better if it’s sooner rather than later. Once he’s as toxic as he can possibly be, he’s much more relaxed.”

Bruce was going to thank him, then realized that Steve had probably had to endure his sarcasm more than any person should ever have to, so he didn’t say anything at all.

“I don’t really get this stuff,” said Steve, waving the stylus at his equations, “but basically the first thing you guys do is work through the geometry of the wormhole. Then you make a static Casimir system—that’s going to violate the averaged null energy condition, which the wormhole does at its throat.”

Bruce felt his mouth grow dry.

“Yes, because the Tesseract acted as exotic matter,” said Steve, answering his unspoken question. “And you’re gonna wanna use the Raychaudhurdi equation, for null-geodesics or non-geodesics.” Steve smiled. “Yes, you three are geniuses.” Steve glanced at Tony, who was slipping his phone in his pocket and walking over to them. “Just jotting some of the preliminary stuff,” Steve said, answering Tony’s unspoken question.

“He’s talking about violating the averaged null energy condition.” Bruce just thought Tony should know. “At the throat of wormholes.”

Tony’s gaze flicked over him, then back at Steve.

“Yes,” Steve said, as Tony opened his mouth. “We’re talking dirty without you.”

Shutting his mouth, Tony glanced at Bruce again, then turned away completely.

“He wants us to build a static Casimir system,” Bruce said.

“Great,” said Tony, still just looking at Steve. “What happened when we did everything you said last time?”

“I’m not sure.” Frowning, Steve kept writing things on the volumetric image.

Tony flicked another glance at Bruce.

“Steve,” Bruce said, his voice quiet.

Steve glanced up. “I think we died.”

“Sounds like fun,” Tony said.

“Just us?” Bruce asked. He could feel Tony’s eyes on him again, and Steve’s, so he didn’t look at either of them. “Or did we take the world with it?”

“Pretty sure it was just us three, Jane, and . . .”

“Pepper.” Tony stalked over to the bench, grabbed his mug, then went over to the coffee pot. “We merry five. But hey, Cap doesn’t know. Don’t give him a hard time about it. He was dead. You just wake up the next morning?”

“Same place, same time,” Steve said, going back to writing. “It’s always the same.”

“What happened in between? Death and waking?” Tony dumped a spoon of sugar into his coffee. His voice was that same sort of flippant tone he always used. “I’ve always wondered what it feels like to die; I’ve just never been able to fit it into my schedule.”

Steve’s golden eyelashes flicked up, pinning Bruce with blue. “Maybe you should ask Doctor Banner.”

Tony’s spoon paused.

Steve’s gaze dropped.

Bruce put on his glasses so he could look at Steve’s equations. “Are you defining the Einstein tensor as the Ricci tensor minus half the cosmological constant times the radius?”

“If that’s what this means,” Steve said, waving a hand at the equation. “It has these components, and—wanna write? You’re faster.”

“Sure,” said Bruce.

As they switched places, Steve went on, “And the other component is one over two times the radial coordinate—that’s r—cubed, times energy exponent twice phi. That’s all derived using traditional coordinates—r, theta, rho—but you’ve also been using orthonormal vectors. And yes,” he said, turning to Tony, “JARVIS is recording this.” Steve turned back to Bruce. “He says he wants to sell it on the internet. I tell him he can’t, because that could be dangerous.” Turning back to Tony, Steve went on, “And I know you weren’t talking about selling the tech, but you’re never clear on what you would be selling.”

“Bruce knows,” said Tony, slamming the mini-fridge where he kept the creamer closed rather hard.

“Um,” said Bruce, because he was pretty sure that if Tony wanted to sell recordings of Steve saying those things, Tony was talking about some kind of pornography.

“You know there’s a market for it, too,” Tony said, sipping his coffee.

Whether there was a market for that was pretty much the last thing Bruce needed to think about right now. And sure, Tony was just being a troll, but in light of how he had phrased certain things in their previous conversation, there was also something really, really personal about his last comment.

And this was Tony relaxed, Steve had said.

“Alright,” Tony said, “orthonormal vectors. That means r and rho are constant, and we define its relationship to the original coordinates—good.” He came up beside Bruce at the holodesk. “You already did that.”

“Um,” said Bruce. “So the new metric tensor is—” He drew an equation with a matrix. “And all the tensors will change their components.”

“Yeah.” Tony sipped his coffee. “Okay, we can do the rest of this on our own; we’re gonna get a relationship between the tension and the density function and some field equations. Let’s skip ahead. Whatcha got, Cap?”

“Okay,” Steve said. “For the wormhole, you’re going to want to impose the conditions we set up on the geometry of the space time manifold, and using the field equations you get the needed matter-energy distribution for that geometry.”

Bruce frowned at the equation. “You mean, for a fixed time t—” He started scribbling again.

“And,” Steve said, “skipping ahead again, remember that since you’re using a cosmological constant, you’re going to need to solve for both the inside and outside.”

“Oh,” said Bruce, lifting his stylus. “So, the interior—”

As he started to jot down another equation, Steve said, “You’re going to find that the radial tension at the throat is positive for holes with a wedge product on the inside less than zero.”

Bruce took a few notes. “So you’re saying the total radial tension for the throat of the wormhole is zero.”

“Christ,” said Tony, and took a long swig of coffee.

Bruce hesitated in his note-taking, checking his math. “Did I—”

“No,” said Steve. “He just gets—sort of bothered by me talking this way. It’s Jane who says that, about the total radial tension. I don’t even know what total radial tension is; I just memorized it.” He turned to Tony. “I’m going to go start prepping the Flux Accelerator for modifications. You guys can work through these and then I’ll give you more in about—” he checked his watch—“thirty minutes.”

They both watched Steve go; then Bruce looked over at Tony, who was still scowling at Steve. Bruce turned back to the equations. They were interesting, but with Tony standing there radiating displeasure, it was difficult to concentrate. “You wanna work on the exterior solution,” Bruce said, sliding part of the image over toward Tony, “and I’ll finish up the field equations?”

Bruce knew that Tony’s gaze snapped over to him, but Bruce kept his eyes glued on the image in front of him and started working through equations. Steve was over at the Flux Accelerator, doing something with some kind of probe. Tony was quiet for another moment longer, then grabbed a second stylus, and started writing.

“We’re being led about by the noses,” he said, after a little while. “You do know that.”

“What do you mean?” said Bruce, plugging the figures. Tony was facing the other direction, which he guessed was for the best.

“If we’re really going to build a wormhole to Asgard, why don’t we just fucking build it? Instead he’s got us dicking around with this bullshit geometry.”

“You think it’s bullshit?” said Bruce. “I think it’s rather clever, myself.”

“I’m not saying we’re not fucking brilliant.”

“I always thought you were,” said Bruce, and sketched a couple more equations for the properties of the stress-energy tensor.

There was another little silence. Steve was still poking and prodding at the Flux Accelerator.

“Junction conditions?” Tony asked, after a minute or two.

“Oh, I started that,” Bruce said, sliding another part of the image over in Tony’s direction. “Boundary at the surface is S.”

“This isn’t enough to make the junction,” Tony pointed out.

“I know,” Bruce said, writing another equation for the properties of the tensor. “The Darmois-Isreal formalism imposes the continuity of the second fundamental form—the extrinsic curvature—at the surface.”

“You’re treating spacetime as spherically symmetric,” Tony said.

“For now.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to do it asymmetrically?”

“I thought I’d rework it later,” Bruce said, jotting down another equation. “The math is easier this way.”

“What are we, in pre-cal?”

“No, I—I’m sorry,” Bruce said. “It wasn’t for you; it was for me. I didn’t want to mess it up. I can do it the other way if you—”

“No,” Tony said quickly. “Symmetrical it is.”

Across the room, Steve had removed the vacuum tube from the Flux Accelerator and now was doing something to one of its calibration monitors.

“Either way, this is a load of horseshit,” Tony said. “It’s all a bunch of theory.”

Bruce smiled to himself. “You mean Steve’s got his hands on your baby, and you’re anxious?”

Tony grunted. “It’s Steve. He should be punching people in the face. Playing baseball. Saving orphans. Instead he’s touching my things.”

“He just wants us to know what we’re doing,” Bruce said, sliding some field equations Tony’s way.

“I don’t like people touching my shit. Know why? Because it’s mine. Steve has a habit of taking my things.”

“Does he?” Bruce asked, scribbling over his equation and reworking it.

“It’s happened before,” Tony said. “I turn my back for one second, he’s snatching something that belongs to me. By the time he brought it back, it didn’t even feel like mine any more. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but Captain America is a dirty rotten thief.”

“It’s nice that you trust him anyway,” Bruce said.

“Trust him? He said we killed ourselves yesterday.”

“There’s that,” said Bruce, defining the last of the functions he thought he could get to. There was a lot more he could do with this, but the equations established the basic physics of the wormhole. To get into how to set the coordinates of the wormhole and how to even open it in the first place, he was going to think about it quite a bit more—supposing it could even be done at all. Steve said it could be.

Bruce guessed he trusted him, too.

“Bruce.” When Tony’s voice went lower it didn’t get softer or kinder, just quieter.

Tony had already written an equation for the surface pressure, so Bruce pulled that into his calculations for the final functions.

“Steve told me to ask you a question,” Tony said. “You know how I always obey Steve.”

Bruce slid over the function for the thin shell. “It doesn’t feel like anything,” he said, and just kept working.

“Yeah, I thought so; that’s why I wasn’t going to obey Steve.” Tony slid him back the function for the boundary surface. “I was going to ask you why you did it.”

“I already told you. I told all of you.” Bruce realized he was crossing his thetas rather fiercely, and made himself stop. “I got low.”

“Look at me.”

Bruce was in the middle of scribbling another equation when the projections went down, and he was left holding a stylus up to thin air.

“Right now,” said Tony, and reluctantly, Bruce turned to look at him. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want,” Tony said, his voice very steady.

“Really?” Bruce started twisting the stylus in his hand, and Tony’s gaze went straight to it. It always did, no matter how quickly it leapt away again. Steve and Natasha pretended like they didn’t notice, while Tony called attention to it. Bruce stopped moving his hand. “It doesn’t seem that way.”

“We don’t have to talk about that time,” Tony clarified. “I want to talk about next time.”

“Tony,” Bruce said, because he seriously disliked this conversation.

“Next time, you call me. You call me, and anywhere I am, I’ll come. If I’m deploying a fucking nuke in fucking outer space, you can bet your ass—I'll still be there.”

“That’s really sweet,” said Bruce. “But for one thing, my life isn’t exactly in any danger. I mean, if you wanna be my white knight, sorry; I already have one. It just happens to be big and green.”

“Maybe I don’t want to save your life,” Tony said. “Maybe I just want to see what happens when you try to take it.”

Before this, Bruce had never really met his match for saying cruel things when someone was talking about something deeply personal. Startled, he looked up.

Tony’s eyes were as dark as the dirt the green things grew from. “Or call Steve,” Tony said. “You know you could call Steve. You could call any one of us, and we would come. Sometimes you still give me the impression that you would do the same for us.” Tony had been standing so still that when suddenly he moved, it was almost a shock. “Hey, Cap,” he called out, walking out around the holodesk and across the room. “We’re done with your dumb space geometry. Don’t go so easy on us next time.”

Bruce rather ardently wanted to rip the entire holodesk out of the floor and proceed to smash it into tiny pieces. Carefully, he removed his glasses and put them in his pocket. His jaw was clenched, and his stomach; he couldn’t stop moving his thumb, so he took a deep breath, then another one. He tried to think of something else, so he thought of Steve, which didn’t work at all this time, so instead he thought of Natasha.

She had asked him to spar, which to him seemed ludicrous on so many levels they hardly seemed necessary to explain. At the very top was the fact that she was so skilled at hand-to-hand that anything serious with him would basically result in her murder, but when he’d tried to explain this to her, she’d just said, “Then I won’t try anything serious.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what’s in this for you?” he’d said.

“It’s about restraint,” she had said, and for once, Bruce felt he almost understood and whole-heartedly believed her answer. He’d seen Natasha lethal, and he’d seen her very, very gentle.

It occurred to him then that she had learned the gentleness more recently.

“Hey, Bruce,” Tony called. “Steve has us on a schedule. Chop, chop!”

Reluctantly, Bruce came out from behind the holodesk.

“Don’t throw it at him,” Steve said, just as Tony lifted his arm.

“Well, you’re no fun,” Tony said, putting down his arm. He was holding the pipe from the flier.

Steve, doing something with a wire-stripper inside the Flux Accelerator, didn’t even look up. “No, he never Hulks,” he said, answering some question Tony didn’t ask.

“Come on, Bruce,” said Tony. “I can only burn you with matches and throw things at the back of your head when he’s not around. Let’s go up to my shop.”

Bruce looked at Steve. “Do I have to?”

There really could be something very devious about Steve’s smile at times; he did this thing where he lifted his brow and crooked the side of his mouth. “Have fun,” he said. “And catch.”

Tony put his arm down again, opened his mouth.

“I know I’m a buzz kill,” said Steve. “And I know that’s not what you were going to say, so I’m not a fucking buzz kill either.”

Tony looked over at Steve in his still, flat way, the way that meant serious displeasure. “Okay,” he said decisively, turning to Bruce. “We’re leaving.”

“What are we doing?”

“That Casimir system. In my shop,” said Tony, and tossed the pipe at him.

Bruce was ready by then and also much closer, so he caught it. “Whoa,” he said, because the pipe was much, much lighter than he had expected. Turning it over in his hands, he saw it was made of a thin shell of metal covering a tube that looked much more like glass than anything else.

Tony was already walking toward the door. “Metallic hydrogen.”

Following, Bruce almost dropped it. “Um.”

“Don’t cream yourself, Bruce,” Tony said, holding open the door.

“But.” Bruce walked through the door, his eyes only for the pipe in his hands. “But,” was the only thing he could think of to say.

“Aliens,” said Tony.

“This shouldn’t exist.”

“I know. Ain’t it grand?”

“Oh, God,” said Bruce, because part of him knew he should be thinking, what is Tony doing with this stuff, but the rest of him was thinking, what could I do with this stuff?

“Come to the dark side.” Tony jabbed the elevator button. “Our cookies violate the laws of physics.”

“But,” said Bruce, and just kept looking at the pipe.

“You’re horribly obvious when you’re turned on.” Tony walked into the elevator, then put his hand on the door. “Coming?”

Swallowing hard, Bruce walked in with him. He thought it was probably a dangerous place to be. He shouldn’t go anywhere with this man. He probably shouldn’t even be holding something like this; it gave him too many ideas. Oh, the ideas—

“Apparently you need time,” Tony said, a little smile playing at the corner of his lips. “Jesus, if I had known you were going to get all hot and bothered, I would’ve let you stroke it sooner.”

Bruce swallowed hard. “I don’t want to stroke it.”

The smile slipped off Tony’s face. “Well, what do you want to do with it?”

What he meant was, Are you going to judge me for this, too?

The answer was yes, because Bruce couldn’t help it. Messing around with metals with physical properties they didn’t fully understand could have an effect on far more people than just him and Tony.

Still, there was Steve. Steve, who hadn’t warned him about this; who hadn’t said, and next Tony will do the equivalent of putting a line of coke in front of a recovering addict, so that at least Bruce could have gotten his bearings before saying something hurtful. Steve trusted him not to fuck it up. Steve thought he could be kind. as if kindness had anything to do with this.

“You need some time alone with it?” Tony’s tone was still flat.

Bruce looked down at the metal, and made himself pretend he was Data again: very interested in molecular physics, and not horrified on behalf of mankind. “I’m just trying to figure out how they quenched it.”

Tony waited, as though he knew the other shoe hadn’t dropped.

“They could have sandwiched it between diamond layers,” Bruce went on. “That could take care of the shock temperature. I’m holding in my hand the holy grail of high pressure physics.”

Stepping out of the elevator, Tony apparently decided to let it slide. “You sure you don’t need some time alone?”

Bruce followed. “How is it possible?”

“Aliens. Didn’t you watch the movie?” Tony held the door open for him.

Bruce went through it, looking down at the metal. Steve was living the same day over and over. Currently, that wasn’t hurting anyone but Steve, but even had Bruce not cared about what happened to him, there had to be something larger going on—some reason this was happening. Whatever that reason was, they had to find out, or it could be dangerous to a lot more people. In order to find out, Steve said they had to contact Thor—and that, in the end, was the problem. Steve didn’t have all the answers.

Sometimes Bruce just wished that someone did.

Bruce looked up again. Tony was standing over by the computer, looking back at him.

“I guess we’re gonna build the plates with it,” Bruce said, walking over toward the computer. “We’ll have to cut it in half.”

Tony turned back to the screen. “Then flatten it and poke it with sharp sticks.”

“Right,” said Bruce. “The pattern’ll have to be pretty exact. Could we write—”

“Steve says we already wrote an algorithm.” Tony’s hands started moving over the keyboard. “He memorized it, put the first few protocols in JARVIS.”

Bruce put on his glasses so he could see the screen. “I think the Flux Accelerator will need a bigger vacuum chamber.”

“I have one here. I can take it apart, replace the one on the Accelerator. Gonna need a few additions anyway.”

“A mechanism to adjust the plates.”

“And cooling. We also need to think about what to do with the—”

“Positive energy?” Bruce read the code Tony was typing into the screen. “I can write the rest of it, if you wanna start building. And I assume there’s a way for JARVIS to direct—”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “I’ll set up the plates with a couple precision lasers; then JARVIS can run whatever you cook up.”

Bruce shook his head. “I wonder which of us geniuses thought this one up.”

Tony grimaced, the expression so brief that Bruce barely even caught it. Tony’s eyes were fixed on the computer screen. “Seriously, Bruce. Is there ever going to be a time when you’re not going to know what I’m thinking? You’re worse than Steve on a repeating day.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said, unconsciously taking a step back.

“Jesus,” Tony said, hands still moving on the keyboard. “Don’t be sorry. You are such a fucking relief to me; you have no idea. Okay, now you’re set.” He grabbed the pipe and moved down the table.

Bruce settled his hands over the keyboard, reading through the initial algorithms. Then he started typing, and it was easy to get into. The Casimir effect caused two plates in a vacuum to affect virtual protons between them, creating a net force. The theory was that this could create a locally mass-negative region of space time—the number one ingredient for a wormhole in current theory. It could only be properly generated if the spacing of the molecules in the plates and placement of the plates themselves was very precise, and it was very challenging, actually, to try to develop a matrix of where each—

“I remember asking you questions every other minute when I was wee-me,” Tony said suddenly.

Bruce glanced up, frowning.

Tony was measuring the pipe and writing things down with a stylus on a tablet. “You didn’t get annoyed,” he added, without looking up.

“No,” Bruce said, looking back down at the screen.

“You know that I was trying to annoy you, right?” Tony asked. “I was trying to figure out what it took to aggravate you.”

Bruce kept typing. “You weren’t trying very hard.”

“I was doing my absolute best,” Tony said. “I think at twelve it just didn’t occur to me that the way to piss you off is to suggest that maybe you should call for help the next time you feel like taking a razor to your wrists.”

Bruce’s mouth twisted. “You don’t pull punches, do you.”

“I pull more punches with you than I ever have with anyone.” Bruce glanced up, and Tony was staring at him, just staring. “Almost anyone,” he added. He looked back down, jotting something with his stylus and obviously thinking of someone in particular. Bruce wasn’t sure whether it was Pepper.

“It didn’t feel that way this morning,” Bruce pointed out.

“You ran away. Again. It pisses the living fuck out of me when you do that, Bruce. But unlike some people, I’m not always angry. Tell me when you’re finished, and I can align the plates.”

“Okay,” Bruce said.

Tony grabbed the pipe, then went to the radial saw on the other side of the room. Putting on protective gear, he positioned the saw, lined up the pipe, and turned it on.

For a moment, Bruce just watched him: Tony’s strong arms, the slight frown he often wore when he worked, his eyes covered by goggles. A spray of sparks arced into the air as the saw screeched on metal, while Tony’s capable hands, covered in gloves, guided the metal through.

Sparking hydrogen should have killed him instantly and maybe Bruce with him. Maybe on other days, it had. Bruce wondered if he’d fought with Tony on every single one of those days. He should have been able to control it, but the problem was, it wasn’t personal. If it had to do with just his own wants or desires—he probably would have done anything that Tony wanted. In fact, that was part of the problem.

When they had been designing the toilet together, Bruce’s favorite parts had been times like now, when Tony got absorbed in something and Bruce had his own puzzles to work on. He was a highly focused person; he didn’t really like to be disturbed while he worked—but it didn’t mean he always wanted to be alone.

He used to do this sometimes with Betty. He’d be working on something and she would just be there, in the same room—studying, working on her own experiments, reviewing her notes, checking his. Her quiet industry paralleling his own somehow made him feel whole.

Bruce refocused on the algorithms on the computer in front of him, typing out code as Tony’s machinery made heavy noises in the background. He still missed her.

*

They’d probably been going at it for about half an hour when Tony suddenly spoke. “Get that, will you?”

It hadn’t been exactly quiet—Tony’s machinery was loud, but Bruce was good at tuning things out. It wasn’t until he registered that this was a different sound that he looked up from the computer. “What?”

Tony was standing by a work table nearby. He had already taken apart his vacuum chamber and was modifying it to hold the plates. He seemed to be using lasers, a blowtorch, tweezers, and a pipe wrench for the job. “My phone,” he said. “Text.”

Bruce hadn’t heard it. “Um.” He looked around. “Where is it?”

“Pocket,” said Tony, then went back to blowtorching.

Tony didn’t expect a protest, as though reaching into someone else’s pocket was no big deal—which of course it wasn’t, for Tony. He was wearing gloves and goggles and working on a rather delicate things and they were both on a deadline. It was perfectly rational that he would ask someone to reach into his pocket, so Bruce went over there and did it. He tried not to touch his ass too much, but did anyway, the warm heat of skin through fabric and the firm brush of muscle. Tony, intent on his work, didn’t even comment.

Bruce checked the phone. “It’s from Pepper.”

“She here yet?” Tony asked, slowly easing a piece of metal into a new angle.

“Um.” It said:

Brought you breakfast

Some mess huh. Poor steve.

Sounds like you kissed and made up. Told you not to worry

Licking dry lips, Bruce tapped away from the text screen. “She’s here. She got you breakfast.”

“Mmm. Wonder if she got hashbrowns.” Tony switched off the blowtorch, then took off his gloves and goggles. When he held his hand out for his phone, Bruce gave it to him. “Let’s hit it.”

“I’m almost done with this,” Bruce said, turning away.

“Nope.” Tony’s hand landed solidly on his elbow. “You’re coming this way.”

“I’m coming this way,” said Bruce, turning in the direction Tony tugged. “But I really am almost—”

“There’s this diner called Glo’s,” Tony said, steering him toward the door. “Have you ever been to Glo’s?”

“No,” said Bruce.

“Bet you eat nothing but shit on toast. Glo’s has the best goddamn eggs benny—and the hashbrowns. My God, the hashbrowns. You’re going to eat these hashbrowns, Bruce. Don’t care if I have to force you.”

“I’ll eat your hashbrowns,” Bruce said, mostly because he didn’t really relish the prospect of Tony force feeding him.

“All of them.”

“Okay,” said Bruce.

“And take off those glasses.” Tony jabbed the button on the elevator, and Bruce took off his glasses.

“Good.” Tony’s eyes ran over him as he stepped into the elevator. “You should do what I say more often.”

Refraining from comment, Bruce got into the elevator with him. Tony rocked on his heels a bit, the way he sometimes did, then glanced at him again. “Smile,” he said.

Bruce smiled.

“You do that nice.” Tony looked away again, and took out his phone. He tapped the screen a couple times. “Huh,” he said, running his thumb down the screen. “I wasn’t worried,” he said, and slipped it back into his pocket. Then the doors opened, and he stepped out of the elevator.

*

Pepper stood beside Steve at the holodesk.

“How was the drive?” Tony asked, walking toward her.

“Fine. Hello, Bruce.” Pepper smiled at him over Tony’s shoulder.

“How’s your mom?” Without waiting for an answer, Tony kissed her.

Pepper had been around for the week Bruce had stayed at Stark Tower after the Chitauri attack, but Bruce hadn’t really paid that much attention—something he now regretted. It had been Pepper whose email had convinced him to return to New York; she’d just sent him some notes about what Tony was working on, and Bruce hadn’t been able to resist, even though he wasn’t planning on working on any of it.

She’d emailed twice since Bruce had turned her into a twelve-year-old, asking him to coffee again and then to lunch. Bruce had attempted to make his refusals polite, but he knew they’d also been terse. She’d also sent an evite to the barbeque in Stark Tower. Bruce didn’t think she really expected him to come.

“What’s that?” Tony said, pulling away. “Cream cheese? Cream cheese without me.” He kissed her again, a quick peck. “You missed some.” Then he kissed her some more.

Realizing that it was Tony, which meant that there wasn’t really any telling when he was going to stop making out with his girlfriend, Bruce went around to the other side of the holodesk so that he could talk to Steve.

“What’d you bring us?” said Tony, walking over to the lab bench where the coffee pot was.

“How’s it going?” said Bruce, pulling a high stool up next to Steve.

“On schedule.” Steve glanced at Tony, who was rooting through a brown paper bag. “My guess is Stark’s working on the vacuum chamber, and you’re almost done programming the plates?”

“Yeah,” Bruce said. Pepper must have said something funny, because Tony looked surprised, then grinned. He hardly ever smiled like that, except around her.

“Good, Doctor Banner.”

The mild amusement in Steve’s tone made Bruce jerk his eyes away. Steve was smiling at him, just a friendly, kind smile that made Bruce uncomfortable anyway. “What are you working on?” Bruce asked.

“Bruce, sorry, no hashbrowns,” Tony called out. “Bagels. You want bagels?”

“Yeah, sure,” Bruce called back. He turned back to Steve. “Are you sick of bagels?”

“No,” said Steve. “Pepper gets something different almost every time.”

Bruce tried to think that through. “How does—?”

“You’ll see,” Steve answered, typing something into the keyboard.

Bruce looked across the room at Pepper, but then Tony was there. “Bruce,” he said again, shaking a paper bag near Bruce’s shoulder. “Bagels. Steve, you want a bagel? Or are you sick of bagels?”

“Nope,” said Steve. “Did she get lox?”

“No. Do you like lox?” Pepper came up with plates and cream cheese. “I was trying to decide.”

“Sometimes you get it.” Steve was still typing. “You’ve only gotten bagels ten or twelve times.”

“Oh, how awful,” said Pepper. “Do you like cream cheese?”

“Sure,” said Steve.

“Bagels,” Tony said again, and at last just dropped the bag into Bruce’s lap.

Bruce finally got from this that he was supposed to take a bagel.

“It’s not awful,” Tony said. He had half a bagel slathered in cream cheese in his other hand. “You did good, Pep.”

“There’s probably a poppyseed one in there,” Steve said, without turning around.

Bruce looked down at the bag. He’d just been planning on taking the one on top. Instead he poked around and found the poppyseed one.

“I was thinking about Groundhog’s Day,” said Pepper, cutting apart a bagel.

Bruce was pretty sure she didn’t mean the day with the groundhog, so he tried to remember—

“It’s a movie,” said Steve, not turning away from the holodesk. “With the guy from Ghostbusters. I watched it on one of the days. And the episode of Next Generation. It was interesting. Kind of funny.”

“It was terrible,” said Pepper, spreading cream cheese on the bagel halves. “Bill Murray just kept having to live the same day over and over. Everything was exactly the same; breakfast was always the same. So, I was trying to come up with a breakfast I wouldn’t have gotten before, and I thought—oh.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “You’ve heard this explanation before, haven’t you.”

Steve smiled at her. “Yeah, but I like it.” He turned back to the keyboard. “Anyway, Doctor Banner’s curious.”

Pepper smiled at Bruce, a little embarrassed. “Well, I just—once it occurred to me to get something Steve hadn’t had before, I realized I must have had that thought before too, so—I tried to think of a way to randomize it. I ended up using my NASDAQ app. It updates realtime, so I figured unless I checked it at the exact same time every day—well, I probably would, but I was relying on Steve varying his day enough that you’d get a sort of butterfly effect, so I would be looking at it at least a slightly different time every day.”

She slid the knife along the edge of the bagel to get the last of the cream cheese off of it. “I took the last two digits of the points, counted that many letters of the alphabet—if it was more than twenty-six, I just looped back—and used the letter I got as the first letter of the name of the place to buy breakfast. ”

“You’ve got more cream cheese,” said Tony.

“I have a whole—” Pepper began, but Tony had put down his bagel and was leaning in toward her for another kiss. “You make me feel like I’m a messy eater,” she said, when he pulled away.

“I’ll clean you up,” said Tony. “You used the NASDAQ to get breakfast.”

“Here, Steve.” Pepper handed him a plate.

“Thanks,” said Steve, putting the plate beside the keyboard.

Pepper turned to Tony. “Notice how he still says thank you?”

“No, how did he say it?” said Tony, and went back to eating his bagel.

Bruce sort of wondered whether she’d just done all of that on the assumption that none of them would have eaten, and that she would have to be the one to feed them. Steve was from the forties and Tony took most people for granted, so there was a high probability that only Bruce noticed that the three of them were dicks.

He didn’t say anything, and ate his bagel.

“Yes,” Steve said, to someone’s unasked question. “I’m forwarding you the list.” He pressed Enter, then turned to face them. “Pepper’s on purchasing,” he explained. “And getting the roof ready.”

Pepper, who had obviously been about to ask how she could help, got out her phone.

“I know what you don’t know what some of those things are,” Steve said as she touched her screen, “but I know you can get them.”

Tony was staring at Steve. Breaking the gaze abruptly, he turned to Pepper and held out his hand. “Lemme see.” She gave it to him, and Tony scrolled through the list. Then he gave it back to Pepper, and looked at Steve. “You don’t have enough vibranium for that,” he said.

“Yes, I do.” Steve’s eyelashes swept down.

“You already know what I’m going to say,” Tony said.

Steve lifted his eyes. “Yes.”

A sneer passed over Tony’s face, almost too quickly to mark, then it disappeared again.

The silence stretched out, sudden and tense.

“Answer me,” Tony said, without asking any question.

“He would want us to use it if we needed it,” Steve said quietly.

It took Bruce a moment to catch up. Steve had said they’d found a solution to the problem of getting enough power to open the wormhole. Whatever was on that list, Tony had concluded they were building something that required vibranium—it had to be a large arc reactor, judging by Tony’s hostile expression.

Or maybe it was just that Tony didn’t want Steve using the shield Howard Stark had made for him.

When the Tesseract had opened the wormhole for the Chitauri, Loki had used Stark Tower as his power source. Without the Tesseract, however, a lot more power would be needed even to create even a non-traversable wormhole. Bruce didn’t really see an alternative to building another reactor, and using Steve’s shield seemed like a pretty good solution—but that didn’t mean he wanted to be a part of this conversation. Not his argument, not his business. The plan was to just do what Steve told him and keep his head down, so Steve’s problem would be fixed and he could go home, happy Fourth of July.

Bruce didn’t move, and Tony was still staring at Steve. “Answer my next question.”

Steve’s brows knit, only slightly, and Bruce could tell that Steve was fighting the expression. He must have learned from having had this conversation before that Tony did not like pity. After having had this conversation fifty times—Steve still felt sympathy for him. “You’re the one who decided, Tony,” he said. “Another kind of reactor would take too long. They’re not as efficient. You don’t have palladium. We don’t need it.”

Finally, Tony looked away, his gaze shifting to nothing in particular. He licked his lips, refocused on Steve. “Answer,” he demanded.

“Yes.”

Tony’s jaw hardened.

“I know,” said Steve, his voice a little hoarse. “You showed me. You’re still in charge of the details, but I build the gross framework. I can do it fast. You helped me.” He looked down at his hands. There was something so weirdly humble about his expression and his posture that it didn’t seem right for a man of his size, and for a moment, Bruce could see the man he had been before the serum.

Tony just stood there staring. When at last his mouth twitched, Steve said in that same quiet voice, “You can build me a new one.”

Tony physically recoiled.

Pepper was putting cream cheese on another bagel—her own, Bruce guessed—but she wasn’t really getting anywhere. Her knife just kept moving back and forth over the same spot again and again. Bruce guessed he should probably talk to her, comment on the weather, pretend like they weren’t listening.

Bruce had never been very polite.

Steve turned away. “You don’t like it when I say please.”

“Fine,” Tony snapped. “Don’t.” For a moment, he simply frowned at the defeated slump of Steve’s shoulders. “Answer my next question,” he said.

“Always,” Steve said, his voice so raw that Bruce’s heart momentarily clenched in his chest.

“Christ. No fucking shit.” Disgusted, Tony ripped his gaze away from Steve’s back, for a moment looking at nothing at all. Then he looked at Pepper, but when he spoke, it was to Bruce. “Come on, Bruce. We have work to do.”

He calls, Bruce thought. He considered telling Tony he hadn’t finished his bagel. Instead he stood up.

“Tony,” said Pepper.

“Probably wanna get a hold of Yoyodyne for that lead,” Tony told Pepper, turning to Bruce. “And see if Weyland-Yutani can get you a ballast resistor of that size.” He was grasping Bruce’s arm now, leading him toward the door.

Bruce knew he should protest being used as a prop, but he didn’t.

“Tony,” Pepper said again, following them to the door.

“Wait here,” said Tony, letting Bruce go.

Bruce waited there.

Tony moved away, started to say something to Pepper, and then Pepper said something, too low to hear. Tony’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and she touched him, just the brush of the back of her hand on his cheek. Tony’s gaze flicked over toward Steve; he nodded once, and then turned away.

Pepper walked back over to the holodesk, where Steve was moving his fingers over the digital images, and Tony reclaimed Bruce’s arm. “Come on,” Tony said, so Bruce went.

*

As they went back up to Tony’s shop, Bruce tried to think of something to say, but he guessed Pepper had already said it. Besides, he didn’t really care about the whole thing between Tony and Steve, whatever it was—except he did, because if anything visibly depressed and disappointed Steve, it was probably that.

Steve talked about it sometimes, and Bruce listened. Steve didn’t talk about it very much, always turning the conversation back so that it was about Bruce, instead of him, and Tony didn’t really talk about it at all. The only time he’d talked to him about Steve was that morning, when he’d accused Bruce of being Steve’s lackey or bootlicker or whatever. Bruce could feel the heat of Tony’s hand on his arm, and wondered whose boots Tony thought he was licking now.

The elevator doors opened. Letting go of Bruce’s arm, Tony stepped out. “Got any ideas for deflecting the positive energy?” he said, as they walked down the hall to the shop.

“A few.”

“Well?” Tony held the door open to the shop. “Let’s hear ‘em.”

Bruce started talking, mostly because Tony wanted him to, but then he started to get into it. Now that he considered the arc reactor, he was starting to think about how to actually stabilize the wormhole and lengthen it so that it would at least be noticeable—

“You’re saying we build a gun.” Tony was looking at the computer screen, but he must’ve seen Bruce flinch, because he immediately rephrased. “A course. A way to repel the negative energy off a series of hooks, which either diminish or completely block the positive energy.”

“If you did it right, you could keep that effect through the length of the bridge,” Bruce said.

“Like a ricochet.”

“The trouble is,” said Bruce, “I have no idea what you’d use to build the initial hooks. I mean, in theory, it makes sense, but . . .”

“You know what pisses me off,” said Tony. He’d finished Bruce’s program on the computer and now was tapping out something else. “We’ve done all this before. Apparently we do it every day.”

Bruce’s thumb ran over his fingers. “If you’ve got an idea for how to build it, I can make a dynamic model for you while you finish up that vacuum chamber.”

“Yeah, okay. Hold up.” Tony keyed in a series of commands, then showed Bruce the screen. “Nanobots. They could build something flexible and stringy, like you want.”

Bruce put his glasses back on, read over the schema Tony had already entered, and nodded. “This could work. Just let me . . .” He reached out.

Tony nudged the keyboard his way, but didn’t otherwise move.

Bruce typed in a couple of commands, highly aware of Tony looking over his shoulder.

Then Tony’s hand was on Bruce’s shoulder, and Tony was leaning in to look at the screen. “Yeah, okay,” Tony said again. Brushing Bruce’s hands aside, Tony started typing. Bruce was going to step back, give him some room, but Tony was typing one handed, his other hand still on Bruce. It was much less like he’d clapped him on the back for camaraderie’s sake (like Steve sometimes still did, when he forgot) and a lot more like Bruce was a piece of furniture he owned. “I was thinking something like that,” Tony said, and took his hand off the keyboard. He didn’t take his hand off Bruce.

Bruce started typing again, and Tony, still looking over his shoulder, slid his hand down to Bruce’s waist. “Yeah,” he said again. “That’s good. Include a new function there,” he said, and pointed, so Bruce added a new function.

Bruce knew that Tony knew he could do this on his own. Tony was just still upset about that conversation with Steve, and somehow, Bruce couldn’t tell him not to touch him. Tony was enough of an adult that he would understand that it wasn’t personal, but he wouldn’t really understand it—fundamentally, deep down. Everything was personal for Tony, and the issue had never ever been that Bruce didn’t like him.

“Like this,” Tony murmured, and brushed Bruce’s hands aside again. He started typing one-handed again, his other hand pressing in on Bruce’s hip.

Bruce said, “Um. I ditched the spherical symmetry.”

“Oh.” Tony stopped typing.

“It makes more sense once you’re considering two limited points in space, rather than two arbitrary ones.” He glanced at Tony, who was staring at him rather expressionlessly. “Did you want to—”

“No,” said Tony, his hand finally sliding off Bruce’s hip. Bruce guessed it was for the best. He didn’t actually know what he had been about to say. “Fixed points,” Tony said. “Like a cruise missile.”

“If you can think of an analogy that doesn’t use weaponry, then yes, like that.”

“I can’t,” Tony said blandly.

Bruce glanced at him again. Tony was just staring at the screen. “Then yes,” Bruce said, going back to typing. “Like a cruise missile.”

“You could write a program as a spacetime extrapolation with attached shortcut equipment.” Tony tilted his head.

“It doesn’t have to be traversable,” Bruce said. “That makes it easier.”

“But wouldn’t it be cool if it was.” Bruce looked at him. Tony just shrugged. “I’m sure Thor would be delighted by his dinner being interrupted with repulsion blasts.”

“Or maybe a sound wave,” Bruce said, turning back to the computer.

“Iron Maiden.”

“I was thinking MC Hammer,” Bruce said, without looking up.

“Genius.” Tony’s hand settled just below the nape of his neck that time, and squeezed. “You’re a genius. Hey, I’m gonna go finish up that vacuum chamber; you good?”

“Yeah. Good.”

“’Kay.” Tony squeezed his neck again and let him go.

The problem was that Tony didn’t even realize he had emotional transference issues.

When Tony was a safe distance away, Bruce said, “I’ve always been curious about the arc reactor.” It was true. He also didn’t want Tony to stay angry at Steve. “It’ll be interesting to see one built.”

Tony picked up a pair of clamps. “All you had to do was ask,” he said.

Bruce searched for the resentment in Tony’s tone, and couldn’t find it. “I know.”

Tony looked up at him, held his eyes. “I’m not sure you really do.”

Bruce looked back down at his screen. Maybe it wasn’t transference after all; maybe this was—whatever this was, it was awful, because Bruce never would have asked. Not because it was personal and not because it was under Tony’s shirt, but because it was a nuclear reactor, and looking at the potential time bomb in someone’s chest was just a little bit too much like looking in the mirror.

“So,” Tony said, just as though he hadn’t said anything at all. “You’re going to use redshift and shape functions, when you plan its trajectory.” He put the clamps into the chamber and twisted. “Like a pathfinder series, with conditions for asymmetry, charge, and dynamics.”

“Um,” Bruce said, typing. The thing was, Tony was just changing the subject. Bruce had to appreciate that, even if it was a little distracting. “You’d need a non-linear control.”

“JARVIS,” said Tony, and directed a robotic probe inside of the chamber.

“Or similar,” Bruce said.

“You’re saying we need something that searches allowed paths and digs spacetime to find the best one for its destination. And allows for disturbances. You’d want it to correct its mistakes.”

“Yes,” said Bruce. “But I have a feeling we use the crystals as pathfinders.”

“Tell me about it.” When Bruce went on typing, Tony said, “I meant that literally. Tell me about it; I want to hear.”

Bruce glanced up. Tony was bent over the probe, positioning it so that it pointed to something inside the chamber, his face turned away. The difficult thing about Tony was that he made some things far too easy.

Bruce could imagine himself here like this, working every day with—with more equipment than even his wildest dreams provided; with the opportunity to explore basically the secrets of the universe; with this person who so entirely understood everything he said and who could take him so much further than he’d ever been. Bruce could imagine that and in that scenario, he was not at all angry. He was simply content.

Bruce recognized the feeling. He’d felt that way when he’d been studying gamma radiation. He’d been with Betty, and he’d felt like he was on the brink of discovering something good and real and new. Something too good to be true.

“Bruce?” Tony straightened, finally turned around.

Bruce looked back down at the computer screen. “Um,” he said, resuming his typing. “I’m just thinking—even if Chitauri probably don’t have FTL, they appear to have made contact with several other sentient races, so they can probably travel at velocities at least approaching light.”

Tony readjusted the probe. “You mean they’ve got to have navigation systems that map routes for them and choose—paths of least resistance.” He tugged the wires some more.

“Something like that,” Bruce agreed.

Tony glanced up. “Keep talking.”

Bruce hesitated. Steve had said the exact same thing to him once, in a jeep on a dusty road in Uganda. “You could just turn on the radio,” he said, and it wasn’t entirely a joke.

“You aren’t stupid,” said Tony. “It’s better than music.”

Bruce ran his thumb over his knuckles, and kept talking.

*

Tony didn’t demand to be entertained for the entire time, but they did run down a lot of ideas for what to do once the vacuum chamber and the current programming were finished.

“No doubt Steve has a plan,” Tony said.

Bruce wanted to tell him not to be so hard on the guy, but he didn’t. When it came right down to it, Tony was doing what he needed to do by giving himself space away from Steve, and Steve probably knew that. When they went back up to the lab, Tony would probably act like nothing happened, call Steve Cap, make lewd jokes, and Steve would look at least moderately happy again, that smile he got on one side of his lips. When it came right down to it, Tony was actually a much better team player than Bruce.

Pepper came down at one point to check on them. “I’m going to pick some deuterium gas, whatever that is.”

“Are you getting it from Omni?” Tony asked, pulling up his goggles.

Pepper smiled. “'When you need gas,' she said, obviously quoting something, 'call Omni Consumer Products.'”

“Good idea. Their delivery windows are a bitch.”

“You didn’t finish your bagel.” Pepper brought a plate over to where Bruce was working. “Steve said you like cream cheese.”

“Um.” For some reason it was sort of embarrassing that Pepper had taken his half-eaten bagel, cut it in half, and spread cream cheese on it. “Thanks.”

“Where’s my bagel?” Tony asked, tinkering with the stand he was making for the metal plates.

Pepper just raised her brows. “Pretty sure it’s hiding with that ‘thank you’ you still owe me.”

“I don’t think I had a thank you,” Tony said. “I definitely had a bagel, though.”

“I think you may have eaten it,” said Pepper.

“Nope, definitely never had a thank you. Bruce, did I ever have a thank you for anyone?”

“No.” Bruce took a bite of the bagel and went back to typing on the computer. “Sorry, Pepper.”

“They said at the orphanage he had both manners and maturity,” said Pepper. “I knew they were lying about at least one before I adopted him.”

“Luckily I have money, so I declared my independence,” said Tony.

“You’re not independent,” Pepper told him.

“I can’t believe you’re making fun of the fact that I’m an orphan. That’s actually a tragic sore spot of my past. You’re picking the scab of my one weakness. You’re shoving Kryptonite down Superman’s pants.”

“So, you’re Superman now?”

“No. Superman is a dick weasel.”

“A dick weasel,” said Pepper.

“Bruce, is Superman a dick weasel?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” said Bruce, and ate more of his bagel.

“See?” said Tony.

“You corrupted him,” Pepper said, slapping Tony lightly on the arm.

“He was already corrupt,” Tony said. “I just discovered him and got him on camera.”

Pepper sat down on a stool beside Tony’s robot. “Steve’s doing well, since you asked. Don’t say dick weasel,” she added.

“Ass canker.”

“He convinced Sparky to load up the Flux Accelerator. Didn’t even have to pay her.”

Tony grunted. “Sparky? How’d he get her down there?”

“The traditional way, I think,” said Pepper. “He told her. She’s notoriously selective about her interactions,” Pepper informed Bruce. “Sparky is Tony’s forklift.”

“So not a hooker,” Bruce said, and kept on typing.

“I like your friend,” Pepper told Tony.

“Yeah, sure, I guess he’s alright.” Tony held out his hand and waggled his fingers. “Gimme those wire cutters.”

Pepper gave him the wire cutters. “You’re welcome,” she said, and turned to Bruce. “Our hooker’s name is Anna-Marie. We only employ her services on Tuesdays.”

“She’s not selective at all,” said Tony.

“You don’t think so?” Pepper smiled; it was a private thing, just for Tony, and he wasn’t even looking at her. Bruce looked down at his computer screen.

“You’re the one who just gave out your porn star name,” Tony said, snipping off some wires and handing the wire cutters back to Pepper.

“Tony discovered me too,” said Pepper. “I’m told I’m incandescent on camera.”

“He told me I was luminous under stage lights. I think he might be lying.” Bruce finished off his bagel.

“I really like your friend,” Pepper said.

“Can’t have him,” Tony said, and started reattaching the panels.

Pepper checked her watch. “My two and a half minutes are up. Steve said I shouldn’t talk about dick weasels too long.”

“Christ, Jesus,” said Tony. “That was a private conversation between me and you. Who told him about it?”

“Bruce is standing right there,” Pepper said.

“Bruce doesn’t count,” Tony said.

“I have no allegiance,” said Bruce.

“Steve didn’t actually say that,” Pepper said, standing up. “He’s too busy feeling horrible about that dumb piece of metal.”

“He can’t feel that horrible. He says this happens every day.”

“Honey,” said Pepper, “he’s Steve. I’ve got to go. Don’t blow yourselves up.”

“Really?” said Tony, “’Cause I was gonna—”

“Expressly forbidden,” Pepper said, and left.

Chapter Text

*

“Pepper says lunch,” Tony said, about three hours later.

“I’m almost—”

“I don’t have to force you to eat lunch too, do I?” Tony was looking at his phone. “Don’t make me tell you about the po’ boys.”

“I dunno,” said Bruce, still typing on the keyboard. “Last time you promised me hashbrowns.”

“Christ, you’re so picky.” Tony scrolled his thumb down the screen. “Jane’s here. And Cap’s gonna go over shit.”

“Okay.” Bruce saved the model and finally took his hands away from the computer.

“He calls,” said Tony, putting his phone in his pocket.

Bruce didn’t bother to tell him he’d thought the same thing about him, and they went over to the elevator.

Upstairs there were Vietnamese sandwiches, Jane Foster, and a forklift with the Flux Accelerator on it.

“Sandwiches,” said Tony. “I was close. Hey, Jane.”

“Steve says we’ve had po’ boys twenty times,” said Pepper. One of the tables had been cleared of equipment, and Pepper was laying sandwiches on it.

“We can’t have them twenty more?” said Tony.

“Hello, Jane,” said Bruce.

“Doctor Banner.” Jane walked over, offering her hand. Bruce took it, and she said, “It’s nice to meet you in better circumstances. Well, ‘better’—different, anyway.”

“It’s just Bruce,” said Bruce. Jane was still shaking his hand. It was a bad habit of hers, but he didn’t mind it as much now as he had last time. “It’s nice to see you again too. I read your paper on self-dual Lorentzian wormholes. Good stuff.”

“Really? What did you think about the zero scaling curvature?”

“It’s great,” said Bruce. “We’ve been using it, I think. You know, this stuff is usually out of my field—”

“But what you did on the Flux Accelerator was gorgeous,” Jane said.

Bruce smiled, a little ruefully. “Thanks.”

“I was thinking about applying to Culver for another grant. You worked there, right?”

“Um,” said Bruce. “A little while.”

“I took Doctor Ross’s class in undergrad. She was one of my advisors. Didn’t you used to know her?”

“I . . .” Bruce looked around, thinking maybe Steve would save him, but he was talking to Tony. Pepper was in the corner on the phone, and Bruce looked helplessly back at Jane.

She was wearing boxers—maybe they were shorts, but honestly, they looked like boxers—and a t-shirt from Davis Planetarium that said, What happens in a black hole stays in a black hole across the front. Her hair was in disarray and she wasn’t wearing any make-up, and she was very, very pretty.

“I knew her,” Bruce said, finally managing to extricate her hand.

“Wow, small world, huh?” Jane said. She waited, but when Bruce didn’t say anything, went on, “I was thinking about moving to New York. There’s all this—” she waved her other hand hazily—“research, but then again there’s S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Not a fan?” Bruce said, raising his brows.

“Are you kidding? You know they tried to keep Thor a secret, right? I mean, after Manhattan, of course they couldn’t, but in Puente Antiguo—did you know they tried to call it testing? Some military mumbo jumbo.”

“That sounds like the armed forces I know and love,” said Bruce.

“I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of dead guys or whatever, but Agent Coulson? Was a dick to us. Thor had to literally break in, Erik had to lie him out again, and I had to have my research on that published under a pseudonym. It never would’ve gotten published at all, except Darcy has hook-ups.”

“Wait,” Bruce said, “are you Hiswife?”

“Oh, that.”

“Jane, his wife,” Bruce said, finally decoding the pseudonym. “Did you write that paper on traversable wormholes—the one with the rabbit in Minkowski spacetime, then in a static wormhole, then in—what was it—a virtual pregnant wormhole?”

“It was unfortunate terminology,” said Jane, “but I was trying to get out what I learned from Thor before it went poof.”

“No. It made sense.” Bruce smiled. “And I enjoyed the figures.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “Oh, God. Darcy’s clipart.”

“Really,” said Bruce. “It was fantastic. Everyone was going one fry short of a Happy Meal trying to figure out who you were.”

“Well, at least I know I’ve made it big time.”

Bruce smiled down at her. She was a little thing. He liked her hair. “Big fan of The Jetsons?”

“What? Oh, you mean the pseud.” Jane shrugged. “Darcy did that. I don’t know. She’s bonkers. You know, I bet we have this conversation every day.”

Bruce kept smiling. “Probably.”

Jane smiled back. “Doesn’t it sound like Steve’s catching on the edge of a Einstein-Rosen bridge?”

“We’re not sure.”

“I’ve been wanting to try to contact Thor anyway. I guess it depends on how much exotic matter we have. The Flux Accelerator was using traces from the Tesseract—exactly how much is there?”

“Not very much,” said Bruce.

“And we don’t know how much we need,” she mused. “You know, theorems that guarantee the energy condition violation are weirdly mum with quantitative statements referring to the total amount of energy condition violating material required. They never really make it clear how little—”

“Bruce, Jane,” Tony said suddenly, finally turning away from Steve, “Bánh mì.”

“—exotic matter you could get away with,” Jane said. “Which makes sense I suppose, since they believed it might not exist, except in arbitrarily small quantities. Did you read that paper by Visser? He wrote some equations which demonstrated you really only needed arbitrarily—”

“Bruce,” Tony said, and started waving something in front of his face. “Bánh mì.”

“—small quantities, but it always seemed to me you’d need a little more if you actually wanted it to remain stable,” Jane said. “I mean, I’ve also read plenty of papers which tried to get around—oh! Salad rolls!” Jane sort of lunged for the table, then, and appeared to forget Bruce’s existence altogether.

Tony just stared at her as she picked out a plate of rolls, Pepper and Steve also preparing their food at the table. Eventually he said, “Those recordings of Cap talking about violating throats—”

“Steve wasn’t talking about violating throats,” Bruce said.

Tony turned to peg him with a stare. His eyes were very dark. “Right,” he said. "And you and science bunny over there weren’t talking about thrusting exotic matter into holes.”

“Um.” Bruce thought about it. “I guess thrust isn’t the word I’d use. Also . . .” He ran his thumb over his fingers. “Probably shouldn’t call her a science bunny.”

“Physics kitten?”

“Or that,” said Bruce.

“All I’m saying is, record her with Cap and bill it like a double feature. Every class of consumer is happy.”

“I think that’s just you.”

Tony turned his flat gaze onto him again. “Is it?” was all he said.

Bruce shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought the rest of us just got off auto-tuning Carl Sagan.”

The side of Tony’s mouth jerked down in a wry smile, but he just kept looking at him, as though trying to figure something out. Then, as though giving up—or maybe he’d figured it out—he waggled the sandwich. “Bánh mì, Bruce. Sandwich.”

“Okay,” said Bruce, and took the sandwich.

“Now sit down and eat it,” Tony said, so Bruce sat down. “And eat it,” Tony repeated, so Bruce took a bite. “Good.” Tony sat up on the bench, put his boots on the table at which the rest of them were eating. “Cap, can we get a—”

“You do know you make the joke you’re about to make every day,” Steve said.

“No.” Tony took a bite of his sandwich, then licked something that had dripped off of his thumb. “The first time you lived it you were still Cap. It’s only every time after that that it’s been a recap.”

“Hilarious,” Steve said, but he was smiling. Bruce guessed he’d made up with Tony. Steve stood on the other end of the table from Tony, and he didn’t appear to be eating any of the bánh mì. Despite the smile, Bruce thought he looked tired. “Okay, thank you all for bearing with me, here. Jane, Doctor Banner and Mister Stark have most of the geometry for the wormhole worked out. They’ve built a closed Casimir system—”

“I’ve always wondered whether that would work,” said Jane.

“Me too, actually,” said Bruce.

Jane turned to him with interest. “The problem is, the typical falling three K photon in CMB radiation would blueshift at the gate of the plates. I mean, you’d get temperatures upwards of ten to the—”

“Try the cucumber sauce,” said Steve.

“There’s cucumber sauce?” Jane looked around with interest.

Pepper put a little cup in front of her, and gave her another salad roll.

“Doctor Banner’s building a model for blocking the positive energy,” Steve went on, “which Mister Stark’s nanobots are going to build. Next, Jane and Doctor Banner are gonna hack the Chitauri crystals, which they’re going to use to direct the negative energy where they want it to go. Mister Stark has one of the vehicles from the aliens who attacked us last year,” he stopped to explain to Jane. “It has an artificially intelligent mechanism which maps space. I can tell you both how to make it compatible with JARVIS.”

“Is there more sweet and sour?” Jane asked, and grabbed another little cup.

“It always takes some finagling,” Steve went on. “There are a couple different methods. I’ll be bringing the Flux Accelerator up to the shop, and Mister Stark’s going to get the bots started. Then you’ll fit the vacuum chamber onto the Accelerator,” Steve told Tony, “and I’ll start on the arc reactor. Pepper’s still working on the list.”

“Almost done,” said Pepper. “The crew’s going to come and start setting up soon.”

Steve smiled. “That’s great. See if you can push that lead delivery to three o’clock. The goal is to move everything to the roof by four—there’s a lot of assembly to do up there. I’ve tried asking more people to help us,” he explained, “but the tasks are specific enough that it requires more time to explain and train that it does to just do it ourselves.” He looked at Pepper. “I’m sorry that you’re always stuck with loose ends.”

“I never remember,” said Pepper. “And I’m good at loose ends.”

“Speaking of which.” Jane turned to Pepper, still chewing a salad roll. “Do you have a hair band? This mess is killing me.” She shook her head, hair waving about her face. “Steve called me so early and it sounded so serious, I left without putting on a bra.”

Tony just stared at her, then turned to Bruce. “The only thing Sagan had going for him was turtlenecks,” he said in an undertone.

“I wasn’t really talking about what he wore,” said Bruce. “But I bet he left without putting on a bra all the time.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth jerked down again. “Betcha Cosmos didn’t make the bucks we could make off of them.”

“I bet you Cosmos didn’t air on Skinemax.”

Tony sat back and looked at him. “Did you want it to? Is that the kind of thing you’re into?”

Bruce swallowed. “Hey Jane,” he said. “Can I try that cucumber sauce?”

“Are you sure your bras will fit me?” Jane was asking Pepper, as she passed Bruce the sauce. “Are my boobs bigger than yours?”

Bruce focused on his sandwich. It was really very good.

“Bet she forgets it every time,” Tony said, his voice lowered again, “and Steve never reminds her. Devious bastard.”

Bruce didn’t really see how he would remind her, because it wasn’t like Steve Rogers would ever say, And Jane, remember to wear a bra, but he didn’t say anything.

“Screw Cosmos.” Tony raised his voice a little so that Pepper could hear him across the table. “Let’s open up a thrift store, Pep.”

“I’m not selling your old suits,” said Pepper.

“We could sell ‘em without the battery.” Tony took his last bite of sandwich, talking around his food. “It’d be great. We could put Steve in the window, so they’d know it was vintage. How ‘bout it old man?”

“Your underwear sales would sky-rocket,” Steve said, without much expression, and Tony sort of coughed while swallowing.

“You mean because of Pepper’s old bras?” he said. “Pepper, do you have that many old bras?”

“I’m thinking about burning them, after this conversation,” said Pepper. “First wave feminism had some really great ideas.”

“Don’t be a spoil sport,” said Tony. “Cap’s not a spoil sport. Are you, Cap?”

Steve just lifted his brows. “I spoil pretty much all the sports, Stark.”

Tony just grinned lazily. “We should go one on one. Basketball.”

“We did,” said Steve. “I won.”

“Doesn’t count.” Tony waved a hand. “I don’t remember. Soccer.”

“I won. Tennis, volleyball, and water polo.”

“Someone must’ve taught you to swim.”

“Bucky,” Steve said blandly.

“It’s always Bucky.” Tony’s voice wasn’t so bland. “I taught you to swim before him, if you’ll recall.”

Steve’s smile was just as lazy as Tony’s earlier one had been. “I recall,” he said.

Tony scowled at him, obviously disgruntled. “Kicking your ass,” he said.

Steve’s smile widened into a grin. “Tie. They’ve been working with asymmetrical spacetime,” he added suddenly, turning to Jane.

“How did you—”

“That’s what you’re usually thinking around now,” Steve said. “Doctor Banner can show you the geometry.”

“I was just going to say that the topological censorship is a lot more like the area increase theorem than the positive mass theorem,” Jane said.

“I know,” said Steve. “Doctor Banner—”

“But that just means you really only need a small violation of ANEC,” Jane went on.

“Jane,” Steve said, his voice steady. “You already went from statically symmetric spherical coordinates into Schwarzchild coordinates, solved for the tensors, and found a C squared geometry across the gluing hypersurface.”

Bruce heard Tony suck in a swift breath.

“Oh,” said Jane. “When did—”

“Um,” said Bruce, “I’ll show you. I’m guessing it was you who decided to solve for the ANEC integral along a radial null geodesic. It’s over here.” They stood up from the table, Bruce looking around for where to put his plate.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Pepper. “I’ll take care of it.”

Tony put up his hand. “Don’t worry about getting your bra,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “Finish your roll, Tony.”

“Have you thought about arranging three bridges side by side?” Jane was frowning a little, an almost-line between her brows as they walked over to the holodesk. “I mean, it sounds like you’ve got the negative mass question solved. That was always the biggest problem, so you might as well arrange things to your liking.”

Bruce frowned. “You mean you’d gain one with a bigger mouth and throat?”

“Or if you extend that settlement to a closed curve of mouths, none of them completely distinct?” Jane went on.

“Golf,” Tony said.

“I won,” said Steve. “Also, you can’t play golf.”

“Hockey,” Tony said behind them.

“You can’t even ice skate,” Steve said.

“I wonder if that would improve the energy requirements at all,” Jane said. Sitting behind the desk, Bruce put on his glasses, and called up the equations they’d done that morning. Jane went on, “And what the difference between a static and dynamic bridge would be, in that configuration.”

“I’m not going to say baseball,” said Tony. “I suppose goddamn America doesn’t lose at baseball.”

“No,” said Steve, “but Iron Man loses at pretty much all the sports you can name. Give it up, Stark.” His tone was warm and teasing, the kind of tone that Steve always used when he was beating Bruce at chess.

“Okay,” Jane said, “without an explicit interpretation of island-like PED regions—oh.” Sitting down next to Bruce, she made a low, delighted little sound. “So you’ve got the Einstein tensor, the Ricci tensor—and okay, I get it, you used spherical coordinates initially—I’m guessing the math was easier? And then you redefined the tensors in orthonormal, okay.”

“Skee ball,” said Tony.

“You cheated,” said Steve.

Tony let out a large, “Ha!”

Bruce went through the rest of the geometry with Jane, which mostly involved scrolling through the equations. She read it as though it was a really engrossing mystery novel, skipping words and flipping through pages just to get to the end and find out who the killer was. When she got to the end, she just said, “Huh.” Biting her bottom lip, she started tapping her chin, and then Pepper was there with a brown paper bag.

“Thanks.” Jane opened the bag and then looked really surprised by what was in it. “Oh, yeah,” she said, and took out the bra.

“You can go to the bath . . . room,” Pepper said, as Jane—well, Jane was doing something with the strip of fabric.

Bruce didn’t know what she was doing. Bruce was utterly and completely absorbed by the figures on the screen, so it wasn’t like he was watching Jane Foster of Hiswife fame put a bra on under her shirt in the middle of one of Tony Stark’s labs.

“Or you can stay here,” Pepper told Jane, tone devoid of commentary. Maybe she was used to this sort of thing. She was Tony’s girlfriend, after all.

Bruce kept his eyes glued on the equations Steve had written, then his and Tony’s far messier ones. Bruce didn’t know where Steve and Tony were, actually; they didn’t seem to be arguing about sports anymore. Looking around the lab—pretty much anywhere besides where Jane was still shifting around beside him—Bruce found them on the other side of the room.

They were so absorbed in conversation that Tony didn’t even notice there was a pretty girl putting on a bra in his lab, which Bruce had to guess was saying something. The answer was in Tony’s hands. He was looking at the round shield with a blank expression; Steve’s hand was on Tony’s shoulder and his other hand was gesturing as he explained something.

“Wow, is that it?” Jane said. “Solid vibranium, right? The element no one knew existed. Darcy would freak.”

“You talk a lot about Darcy,” Bruce said, turning back to her. It sounded like she’d stopped wiggling, anyway.

“She says she’s my liaison to the human race,” Jane said. She’d pulled her hair up into a really messy bun. Bruce still liked it, and somehow managed to refrain from looking at her chest to see whether he liked that too. “I need to touch it,” she said. Bruce swallowed, and looked away. “Do you think he’ll let me touch it? Darcy says my touching impulse is awkward and weird. She says I need to restrain it as much as I can.”

“Maybe Tony should get a Darcy,” Bruce said, and turned back to the computer. He didn’t really know what he was doing with it.

“That would be a match made in—well, a really really seedy bar. I really do need to touch it. Tell me it’s not awkward and weird,” Jane said.

“It is neither awkward nor weird,” Bruce said, running his thumb over his fingers. He’d never touched Steve’s shield. It wasn’t like he’d never wanted to look at it—it was a marvel of physics, and Howard Stark had made it. Howard Stark may as well have been Leonardo or Tesla or someone, but Bruce had never touched it.

Jane went over to Steve and Tony, and Pepper sat down in Jane’s place. “I never wished you happy Fourth of July,” she said.

“It’s not my favorite holiday,” said Bruce, watching as Jane started talking to Steve and Tony. He turned to Pepper. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“Hm.” The corners of Pepper’s mouth turned up. “You never RSVPed to our barbeque.”

Bruce shut down the geometry and called up the model he’d been working on in Tony’s shop. “Didn’t occur to me you were holding your breath,” he said.

“I wasn’t.” There was a pause, and Bruce started running the protocol that will build a volumetric model of what he’d done so far. “An invitation to a barbeque isn’t another invitation to work for me you know,” Pepper said in a friendly way. “Sometimes it’s just a barbeque.”

“I wasn’t trying to snub you,” Bruce said, adding more algorithms even as the images compiled.

“I’m sorry,” said Pepper, in that same friendly tone. “Were you trying to reach out?”

That wasn’t fair, so Bruce didn’t answer. He’d never been able to figure out what Pepper wanted from him. Sometimes he thought that he probably wasn’t very fair either—that she was just as harmless as she seemed, and she was only trying to be nice to him. Then he remembered that no one became CEO of a major corporation by being harmless, and that Stark Industries was only one on a long list of businesses that would be willing to seduce him.

The industry had been recruiting him long before the Hulk; the government had singled him out straight out of high school. Only after the Hulk had he truly seen the problem with the things they had wanted him to build.

He glanced over, and Pepper was looking at him with a great deal more pity than he deserved. “Is it so hard to believe that I honestly want to be your friend?”

“It’s not hard to believe,” he lied.

“If we’re going to avoid being cast in Tony’s first film, we should learn to work together.” Pepper looked innocent. “Or did you want to be in an X-rated physics documentary?”

“Um,” said Bruce, because he expected things like that from Tony, but it was still shocking from Pepper. He guessed there had to be reasons they were together.

“Don’t worry,” Pepper said. “I can generally dissuade him from everything except his worst ideas.”

“An X-rated physics documentary isn’t his worst idea?”

“That one’s tame. I was pleased you got him to do some work on plumbing efficiency. I wish he’d focus on his energy initiatives, too.”

“I didn’t get him to work on plumbing efficiency.”

“Yes, you did. You might not have done it on purpose, but you did.” Pepper smiled, a little bit regretfully. “He always wanted to do more non-profit work.”

“His name is Tony Stark,” Bruce said, not quite sarcastically.

Pepper’s smile turned into one of amusement. “Well, maybe I’m confusing him with myself. But it’s hard to devote the resources that would be necessary to make big changes when people don’t understand why they should be interested.”

“Why they should be interested,” said Bruce.

“Yes,” said Pepper, looking a bit confused by his tone.

“Should be interested,” Bruce said again, because this was how she was going to do it. She was going to find the things he was concerned about and seduce him with them, because she was Pepper Potts, and she got what she wanted. This was how she was going to interest him. “Who decides they should be interested?” he asked. “You?”

Pepper blinked. “You don’t think people should be interested in making the world a better place?”

“I don’t think I get to decide what anyone is interested in.”

Her brows slowly went up. “Maybe you should.”

Bruce turned back to the computer.

“Not everyone is trying to use you, Bruce.”

The images had compiled, and he was looking at a three dimensional version of his model.

For a minute, Pepper was silent. Bruce didn’t know what she was doing, because he wasn’t looking at her. “You saved Tony’s life. Twice.” She stood up. “Even if I didn’t like you otherwise, I would consider you a friend for that. I always pay what I owe.”

Surprised, Bruce turned back, but Pepper was already walking over to the others. For a moment, Bruce just watched her, thinking that this happened much more frequently than it should, actually. He was a horribly suspicious person; he dissected people’s motives, pulled apart their intentions until every base assumption, every insidious accusation had been silently leveled and considered.

He’d spent a lifetime doing it, only to learn that most of the time, the reason people did the things they did had nothing to do with him at all.

*

Bruce finished up the model with Jane, while Steve finished moving the Flux Accelerator up to Tony’s shop. Once Tony was finished with the vacuum chamber, he would take the smaller chamber off the Flux Accelerator and replace it with the larger.

Working with Jane was both easier and more difficult for Bruce than working alone. It was easier because she was far, far better with all of the theory—partly because this was her field and she’d been working with all of it for the past three years, but partly also because she was just really really good. She was also superb at the math, which had never really been Bruce’s strong suit; he tended to be more abstract. The thing about Jane, though, was she could be really abstract.

They were talking about the difficulty of keeping the positive energy from collapsing the system as they built their model, when she remembered the paper she’d read about constructing a wormhole without the use of exotic matter. It really was an interesting theory; the bridges she was talking about satisfied a general Smarr relation, and demonstrated linear stability with respect to—

“What?” said Tony. He’d come up to the lab from the shop. “Bruce, what are you talking about?”

“Look.” Bruce gave him the tablet, because it was cool and it was Tony and, “A subset of them are stable.”

Tony looked at the tablet, then back at Bruce. “This would require at least one Jovian mass,” he said.

“You just need a higher curvature of gravity,” Jane said. “Look.” She handed out her own tablet. “In low energy heterotic—”

Tony didn’t take it. “I don’t want that. Why are you giving me that? Did you just say heterotic at me?” He turned back to Bruce. “What are you doing?”

Jane blinked. “What?”

“A Jovian mass, Jane,” said Tony.

Chagrined, Bruce realized what was wrong. Well, it wasn’t wrong, exactly. The theory was correct, and it was still brilliant. It was also perfectly harmless, always a plus, in Bruce’s book—because there was absolutely no way they could build a wormhole on such a large scale with current technology. Even if they could, there was no way it could possibly be useful to them to solve Steve’s problem. “Um,” Bruce said, turning his stool back to the holodesk. “We finished the model. So, there’s that.”

Jane looked at him and then back at Tony, the almost-line back between her brows. “Physicists have theorized for decades that a bridge could stabilize on that scale,” she said, frowning. “When you consider—”

“You want to kill us all.” Tony stared at her, then looked down again at Bruce. “She’s probably the reason we all died.”

“We died?” Jane had this way of lifting her upper lip, sort of like a little question mark when she didn’t get something. “Did Steve say that? What did it feel like?”

“Zilch,” said Tony. “Nada, nil, the big goose egg, the null abyss of an infinite void, and we can go there again if you wanna throw the Earth in a big black hole. Though if what your shirt says is true, maybe it’d be worth it; there are some things I wanna do that I probably would—”

“My shirt is true.” Jane frowned some more. “And anyway, I’m not talking about black holes; I was just using it as an example. A bridge wouldn’t have an event horizon; I’m talking about how you don’t have to use QM; you can use GR to make it work. Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet—”

Tony looked down at Bruce again. “Bruce, explain to her the mass of Jupiter.”

“Hey,” Jane snapped, hands on her hips. “Look at me. I know what the mass of—”

“Oh, excuse me.” Tony looked at her, brows straight up toward his hairline.

Bruce looked around for Steve, because in this day Steve had planned right down to the second, he should be stopping whatever Tony was about to say.

Tony said, “Are we building something with dreams and imagination, because I’ll take a perpetual motion machine and the Death Star, please. Bruce, what do you want, a water-fueled car?”

“Don’t be a dick, Tony.” Bruce’s voice was quiet and he wasn’t looking at him, because this wasn’t even remotely fun anymore.

“I’m not being a dick; I’m being pragmatic. Unlike some people. We’re building something here. With our hands.” Holding up his hands, Tony waggled his fingers. “These hands. Right here. Now, I know you people aren’t used to that, but you’ve got to leave all your pretty theories behind and bring it down to my level, now.”

“You mean . . .” Jane held her hand down below her hips. “Your level right down here?

Pursing his lips, Tony glanced down at Bruce, then back at Jane. “Little higher,” he said, and Jane brought her hand up. “Little higher,” said Tony.

Jane was smiling now, and a slender clump of hair had fallen out of her messy bun and was curling around her neck.

“Tell you what,” said Tony. “You go outside, reach your hand up to the top of this building. About that high. Except . . .” Frowning, he tilted his head. “No. That’s not quite accurate, since I did build this single man air unit that I found out can double as a spaceship for a short period of time—longer, really, with a couple modifications so—kind of—maybe—infinitely high? She’s gonna need a longer arm,” Tony told Bruce.

Jane just kept smirking. “But I’m guessing I’m not gonna need an arm the size of Jupiter.”

“Hey, I didn’t say that. It’s a matter of time. We have a day. Well,” Tony added, “it’s also a matter of not pitching our planet into a gravity trap from which it would never escape, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t do it if I wanted to. Does me saying that make you wanna freak?” Tony looked down at Bruce again.

“Um,” said Bruce.

“Don’t freak,” said Tony, and put a solid hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “We good?” he asked Jane.

“About keeping things on your level?” Jane raised her brows. “You know, theoretically, it’s totally possible to build a Death Star.”

“Careful, you’ll freak Bruce.” Tony was kind of rubbing circles on the nape of Bruce’s neck with his thumb now, and Bruce resented it; he really resented it. Tony touched him like a possession or like a pet, without intent or conscious thought, and Bruce couldn’t tell him to stop. He didn’t even know why he couldn’t.

“We’re good,” said Jane. “I understand you have your limitations.”

“When you say limitations—” The rubbing stopped. “Steve.”

Bruce looked up. It was just Steve, with his big blue eyes and strongly angled jaw, lines of concern in his high forehead and the pinch around his mouth that meant that he was stressed and trying not to show it. When Bruce met his eyes, some of those lines melted, but Bruce still thought that he looked sad.

Tony’s hand slid off of Bruce entirely, and something in Bruce’s stomach clenched, hard; he thought that he might be close to—freaking, and he couldn’t fathom why.

Tony turned to Steve. “Is Jane the reason we died?”

“No.” Steve turned his warm steady gaze back to Tony. “I think it was me.”

“Oh.” Tony stared at him, then licked his lips. “Was it because I cheated at skee ball? Or are you still mad about the steroids thing?”

Bruce didn’t know what steroids thing; he was still unknotting his stomach.

Steve turned to Jane. “I assume Stark dissuaded you from GBD wormholes. I’m sure it’s a good theory.”

Tony hissed. “Don’t encourage her.”

“It is a good theory,” said Jane, “but scientists are always compromising their vision for engineers who can’t handle it, so I guess that’s just the name of the game.”

Tony looked at Steve. “Does she always talk like this?”

Steve smiled. “Pretty much.”

“Hm.” Pursing his lips, Tony turned back to Jane. “You finish your grant?”

Jane looked at him defiantly. “Yes. As a matter of fact.”

“Great,” said Tony. “Need a job?”

“Huh?”

Tony crooked a finger at her. “Stark Industries wants you. Here, Steve, you’ll do this to better effect.” Putting his hands on Steve’s shoulders, Tony started turning him.

Steve grabbed Tony’s wrist and brought it down. “I’m not Uncle Sam,” he said, and let Tony go. “Jane, please talk to Pepper about the job after seven o’ clock; Stark, because you’re going to ask at some point, we played skee ball at the Crocodile Lounge, and no, I’m never going there again.”

Tony’s mouth twitched.

“Yes,” said Steve, smiling again, “I did go there with you the once. You had . . . a lot of beer just so I could have all the mini-pizzas. I know you don’t even like beer—actually, I don’t even really like pizza after that, and I’m guessing Doctor Banner and Jane are done with the model. I need to explain the crystals so they can get started on the next part.”

The crystals were photonic, which meant they affected the photons passing through them, and only certain wavelengths of light were allowed to travel through them. This in effect could create a code, almost like using light as a language. Bruce could’ve spent a decade just analyzing the cultural implications of something like that, but Steve was already telling them how to read the crystals.

On previous days, they had mapped the crystals and translated the code. That was how they had determined that one of the crystals held a multi-dimensional map of the Chitauri’s known universe, and could even chart new obstacles or disturbances if it was in motion. Another crystal held the decision-making algorithms that could plot the course between locations, using the information from the first crystal. The last crystal appeared to be a pilot mechanism, which used the decisions of the second crystal in order to steer the Chitauri fliers.

The programming was complex but not indecipherable, according to Steve. The difficulty was in applying the information from the first and second crystals to direct the formation of the wormhole, rather than pilot a space craft. Steve said Jane and Bruce had theories about how to aim the negative energy so that the wormhole folded the space they needed it to, but incorporating the decision-making algorithms in the crystals was proving difficult. Bruce and Jane got to work on it while Tony and Steve went back to work on the Flux Accelerator.

At first, it was really interesting—learning how the Chitauri had encoded the crystals, then taking apart the programming language they’d used and translating it to their own. The map of their known universe was particularly exciting, because according to the map there were at least fourteen dimensions, when last Bruce had heard plenty of scientists had settled on just eleven. Apparently one of those fourteen was Asgard.

Bruce knew that it was dangerous, reaching out into the void like that. For one thing, the alien race that had nearly destroyed Manhattan and had wanted to destroy their Earth was in that void. For another, the last time Bruce had reached this deeply into the darkness to ask a question, the answer had been the Hulk.

And somehow—maybe because he actually hadn’t learned a goddamn thing—that didn’t make it any less exciting.

*

Bruce was coming back from the bathroom when he saw Jane with the universe spread out like a blanket around her shoulders. She’d gotten JARVIS to compile a volumetric image of the data they’d recovered so far; the whorls and eddies were another eight dimensions and the thousands upon thousands of bright smudges—just like stars—were galaxies.

Five or so years ago, NASA had released a series of deep field images from Hubble that showed many of the known galaxies. Something about it had made Bruce’s throat close and his eyes burn. There were plenty of—far more rational—things to cry about; he’d been in a bad place at the time. Still, it was those images from Hubble that had moved him to finally do so. He wanted to tell those pictures, don’t keep secrets from me; he wanted to tell them, I don’t know you, but I want to.

After watching her for a moment, Bruce walked over to Jane. She pinched one of the little galaxies floating before her, then slowly opened her fingers. The galaxy expanded while the rest of the map fell away, until at last she stood in the center of their own Milky Way. He could even find the region that held the Sun.

“When I asked Thor where he was from,” Jane said, “he pointed.” She moved her finger along one of the arms of their galaxy. “Here.”

“At Andromeda?”

“The woman in chains.”

Jane wasn’t looking at him. Her brows were arched up slightly, her lips pressed together, that tendril of hair escaped from her bun to curl around her neck. Bruce thought that she looked sad.

S.H.I.E.L.D. probably had a file on Jane Foster, but it wasn’t one of the ones Natasha had given him to read on his trip out of Kolkata. Jane had been mentioned in Thor’s file, including a detailed summary in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s point of view of all that had happened in Puente Antiguo. Thor appeared to be on friendly terms with Selvig, Lewis and Foster, the file had said, and seemed to have a particular affinity for Foster. It didn’t say anything about how she felt about him.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Bruce said, stepping into the Milk Way with her. When she looked over at him, he said, “Coulson said when Loki first showed up, they had you moved to Tromsø.”

“Moved to. Is that what Son of Coul said?”

Bruce smiled in sympathy. “Actually, they said they’d offered you a consulting position with a hefty fee.”

“They lied to me.” Jane flicked her hand, and the volumetric images went away. She reseated herself at the bench and started picking away at their program. “I heard Thor was just thrilled with it.”

“I got the impression he was concerned about your safety.” Bruce put his glasses back on and sat down too.

“Then I guess it’s alright. What could I have done?” Jane was sort of jabbing at Tony’s touchscreen keyboard. “Not possibly figure out how to shut down the Tesseract. I’m just a damsel in distress.”

Bruce tapped out a couple commands. “Do you think Loki would have come for you? If you hadn’t been—if they hadn’t lied to you.”

“I dunno. I never really met Loki.” Turning to him in the swivel chair, Jane pulled her foot up onto her seat, wrapping her arm around her bare knee. “I don’t know Thor that well either,” she said. “But I think—I think, yes. If Loki had been trying to get to Thor—it’s not clear to me he was—one way might have been through me.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Bruce said, making his voice gentle. “I’m not S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Thor and I—I’m not really good with boyfriends. Before Thor, I was dating this guy who . . .” Drawing her other foot up into the chair, Jane wrapped her arms around both her knees. “I mean, we broke up. I think what I’m trying to say is Thor is an alien,” she said. “I’m sort of like an alien. I don’t relate to people very well; I never seem to speak the same language. I thought . . . I sort of thought that Thor and I would work.”

Bruce glanced at her over the tops of his glasses. Curled up in that chair, she really didn’t look like someone who had difficulty relating to others. She mostly just looked wistful. Kind of vaguely childlike. Pretty. Bruce looked away. “Maybe you can,” he said.

“You think so?” Jane’s tone was absent. “The problem is, I think he was into me for the same reason. I mean, for him, I was some sort of . . . symbol of humanity. I needed his protection.”

“You think that was why he cared for you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But it was why you cared for him.”

“Thor happens to be my type, but . . . even if he hadn’t been, I would have been into the fact of him.”

“What do you mean?” Bruce asked.

“Like it had more to do with where he came from, what he was, how he got here, than him. That’s not even the same as being attracted to someone just for their body. Darcy says if I hooked up with him it would be like I was having sex with a spaceship.”

“I’d do a spaceship,” Bruce said, without looking over.

“You would?”

“I guess it would depend on whether we could use protection.” Bruce kept on typing into the computer. “But a spaceship, sure. The Starship Enterprise? I’d tap it.”

“Well, but the Enterprise has Data. I mean, if you’re going to go for a piece of out-of-this-world technology.”

“Um,” Bruce said, because Data was a guy. Played by a guy, anyway.

“I don’t mean that actor is my type,” said Jane. “He could be shaped like a vacuum cleaner. He could take his face off—in fact, I’d probably prefer it if he took his face off. It’d be the idea of Data that would do it for me. Like the idea that you could perform an act so purely biological with something someone had built; I would just be interested in how it would work—and oh God. I’m being weird. Does weird make you—you know—arghhh?” She waved her hands from side to side like a crazy person.

“No,” Bruce said quietly. “No, Jane, it doesn’t make me argh. I understand weird.”

“I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t notice Thor’s body,” Jane said. “It’s sort of hard to miss. And I liked the way he cared about us, so quickly, how loyal he was and so—heroic, I guess. That’s my type. I wanted to marry He-man. Or Simba. Not cub Simba; I mean when he grew up.”

“Um,” Bruce said again. “Cub Simba?”

“You know, because he’s a lion.”

Bruce smiled, sort of incredulously. “Are you talking about a movie?”

“I wasn’t attracted to him as a lion.” Jane took down her hair, a spill of chestnut, then started gathering it again to put in a tighter bun. “Well, maybe I was. See, that’s what I’m talking about. I was attracted to Simba because, you know, he’s big and golden and heroic and tries to do the right thing, but also he was a lion, and no doubt my formative years were spent envisioning how that would work.”

She finished tying up her hair, and Bruce could already tell it was going to loosen and start coming down again. “I don’t remember it—thinking about lion sex, I mean, but it was probably happening in my brain somewhere. You just don’t know with stuff like that. I was probably fascinated by the difference in anatomy and what kind of inter-dimensional shift it would take, really, to make a cartoon lion my ideal man. Is this over-share?” Her brow puckered in sudden concern. “I’m sure Darcy would classify childhood lion sex fantasy as over-share.”

“You’re fine.”

“You have a weirdly non-judgmental face. I thought you’d be more—you know.”

“No?” Bruce said, turning back to the computer.

“Jumpy. Like you were just going to flip out any second.” She sounded concerned. “I probably shouldn't have said that.”

“It’s okay,” Bruce said, trying not to smile too much. He didn’t want her to think that he was laughing at her, because it was absolutely the last thing he wanted to do. “There’s not really much you can say that would make me flip out.”

“Not even lion sex fantasies?”

“Not even lion sex fantasies.”

“Anyway. All I meant was, I guess it’s no wonder that part of me wanted to do Thor.”

“You mean, because he’s . . .” Bruce tried to choose his words. “A scientific curiosity.”

“Right. Space DNA,” Jane said, turning back to her side of the shop’s holodesk. “Darcy calls it space seed.”

“Um.” Bruce smiled more, then. “Well, luckily, I don’t think that Thor is Khan.”

“Speaking of which, this sort of reminds me of that episode where the Enterprise kept blowing up.”

“Yeah. I’m Worf, apparently. Tony thinks he’s Doctor Noonian Soong. Wanna be Data?”

Jane laughed. “I said I’d do him. I didn’t say I wanted to be him.”

“Well,” said Bruce. “Who did you wanna be?”

“Um. Don’t kill me?” Jane turned her chair again. “I wanted to be Princess Leia.”

Bruce felt another little piece of himself melt. “Really?”

“Yeah. I was always a Star Wars girl. I loved fantasy. I mean, I knew I was Data. I knew I was C3PO, but when I drifted off, I was the one fighting aliens or wearing pretty dresses or leading armies. It’s like my thing with guys—I don’t go for scientists. It’s totally incongruous. Donald was like a huge golden retriever; I was head over heels. I know it doesn’t make sense; my hero should be Nancy Roman, not Ripley.”

“Ripley is a perfectly acceptable hero,” Bruce said gently.

“I know.” Jane gave him a little smile. “But unless you’re reading Carl Sagan, astrophysicists don’t go anywhere. I mean, Tony was a jackass, but he's right. I’m just going to sit in an ivory tower with these theories; but when it comes to the things I dream about, the things I want . . . Darcy says it's out of character.”

“It's beginning to sound to me like maybe you should take the things that Darcy says with a grain of salt,” Bruce said.

Jane hitched a shoulder. “Darcy has to explain it to me when I’m being weird. No one else will. She looks out for me.”

“Can I tell you something?” Carefully, Bruce took off his glasses and turned to her. Jane tilted her head, so Bruce folded his hands and said, “You are not weird. If you’re different from other people, it’s not because there’s anything wrong with you. As far as I can tell, you’re a far more decent specimen of humanity than I usually encounter.” He stopped because Jane had a funny look on her face. “What?”

“Steve said the same thing to me.” She seemed more puzzled than anything else. “Last time I was here. He seemed really really bothered by me saying I’m sort of a freak when it comes to social interaction.”

“You’re not,” said Bruce.

“Yes, I am.” Her legs were folded up in front of her again. “You know, I am actually totally cool with the fact that I have a hard time reading cues, my laugh lasts too long, and people tend to move away from me at parties. I don’t like parties. I just interact with the people I want to, and they interact with me. And actually really hot guys tend not to care that I’m this total social reject, because of how I look. But it just means less people I have to deal with. Less effort I have to expend. I am fine with this. I’m totally fine.” She frowned a little. “Are you fine with this?”

The real question was, was Steve?

Steve was more than adept at reading social cues, and no one would ever move away from him at a party. It didn’t change the fact that there were some ways in which Steve simply could not relate to anyone living on this Earth. Steve had actually said to Bruce once, I’m the most unnatural person I’ve ever met.

“I didn’t mean to . . .” Bruce glanced down. He was fiddling with his glasses.

“It’s okay. I mean, Tony said Steve was only trying to help. So I guess you were too.”

“I’m not sure you should take your interpretation of humanity from Tony,” Bruce said.

Jane grinned. “You were right that I probably shouldn’t take it from Darcy, either. But she’s one of the only people I’ve met who’ll tell it like it is. Other people are always saying things they don’t mean. Tony doesn’t really seem to do that either.”

Putting his glasses back on, Bruce turned back to the image in front of him. “Do you think you’ll take the Stark Industries job, if Pepper offers?”

“I don’t know. What does Stark Industries need an astrophysicist for? Then again, what does anyone need an astrophysicist for.” Turning back to her own set of algorithms, Jane pecked on her keyboard. “I guess I’m just afraid they’ll end up doing douchey things like taking my research or suppressing it. I mean, how different is it than working for S.H.I.E.L.D.? How affiliated are they, you think?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. did save the world,” Bruce pointed out, just to play devil’s advocate.

“Yeah, well. I’m not sure I entirely approve of their methods.”

“I might be the only person in Manhattan who agrees with you.”

“Well, you know that saying about enemies.” Jane pecked some more. “Let’s be friends.”

Typing out his own code, Bruce smiled. “Sure,” he said.

Chapter Text

Around four o’clock, Bruce and Jane had completed the translation program. JARVIS was scanning the crystals and spitting out code. Steve and Tony had melted down Steve's shield, using the vibranium to stabilize the arc reactor's core. They'd built the basic framework, then transported it and the Flux Accelerator to the roof. The rest of the materials for the arc reactor were also things Tony had had on at hand, rather than building entirely from scratch. There were parts that looked like things from cars, hazmat dewars, even—God, scavenged pieces of the Mach III armor. It was sort of this ugly hodge-podge of metal, and Bruce stood there looking at it when he first got to the roof because he couldn’t look away.

Tony came out of the elevator onto the roof, depositing a sheet of metal by the framework. “She ain’t pretty,” he said, “but she’ll drive.”

Bruce swallowed.

The others were downstairs, in the process of transporting things up. The sun was hot today, glittering off the twisted surfaces of the arc reactor’s backbone, beautiful and bright. It looked unnatural, a mutant thing born of metal arms and men’s aspirations, precious pieces of earth bent to the will of monsters. It looked like destruction, the way that scars did, the way that human flesh, when it healed, did not hide the fact that there had been wounds.

“Go ahead and say what you’re thinking,” Tony said quietly, because Tony had no idea what he was thinking.

Bruce was thinking that out of this wreckage had been born this useful thing, something Tony said would work, something with more power and ingenuity than anything else the world had yet to offer.

Tony had built his first arc reactor, not to mention his first metal suit, in a cave. Out of scraps. Sometimes the absolute worst thing about working with Tony was trying to erect some kind of defense again desperate, almost hopeless waves of admiration.

“It isn’t pretty,” Bruce said.

“You—”

“It’s spectacular.”

At least it shut Tony up, and Bruce couldn’t look at either of them—Tony or the machine.

“Bruce,” Tony said.

Bruce put on his glasses, and went over to the Flux Accelerator. He was going to need to open up one of these panels and rig up something like an auto-pilot device. He had some ideas for the software, but it was the hardware he wasn’t really confident about; it wasn’t like he’d ever—

“Holy shit,” said Jane, coming out of the elevator. “You built this in three hours?”

Tony’s focus snapped away from Bruce. “You know, Jane,” he said. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you should gimme all your ideas for that Death Star. After this, it’s looking like I won’t have anything to do after lunch tomorrow. Might as well whip up a little something something.”

“I’m serious.” Jane squatted beside the framework, running her hand over the metal. It sort of looked like she was stroking a large dog. “This is amazing. I don’t even know what it is.”

“I could tell you,” said Tony, “but I’m not sure it’d be on your level. You know, down here.” He paused, obviously watching her in the space of silence. “Hey,” he said, “if you want to stroke it, that’s more of a hunk of metal than anything else. If you want one that actually works, I’ve got one right here.”

“Oh, can I?”

Bruce was busy rooting through a group of wires in the Flux Accelerator, so he couldn’t see Jane’s expression. He was pretty sure, though, that the arc reactor in Tony’s chest fell into that Data-alien-lion fixation category that Jane had been talking about, which was just another reason not to look. Instead, he focused on the wires.

They’d decided to rig it so that JARVIS was directly in control of the energy from the arc reactor, which they hoped they could use to expand the wormhole in the right direction. The arc reactor would already be linked to the Flux Accelerator, and the Accelerator was already linked into JARVIS, so adding a couple more protocols was going to be easy. What was going to be difficult was—

“Scratch your fingernail on the scars around the rim,” said Pepper. “He loves that.”

Startled, Bruce glanced up. Tony was standing there with his shirt rucked up under his armpits, Jane’s hand on his bare chest. Pepper had just come up through the elevator and appeared to be regarding them with amusement.

“He does?” said Jane, and Tony snapped his shirt down, jerking Jane’s hand away.

“Pepper,” he rapped out. “I’m shocked and surprised at you. I resent you thoroughly. Come here.” Reaching out an arm, he pulled her to him, then kissed the side of her neck.

Pepper just laughed.

“Does it come out?” said Jane.

“Yes,” said Pepper, at the same time as Tony said, “No.”

“It comes out,” Pepper said.

“Pepper’s taken it out,” said Tony. “She’s put it in me, too. Haven’t you, honey-bunches?”

“It’s a bit of a squeeze, really,” said Pepper. “And kind of goopy.”

“Just fluids. She’s squeamish.” Tony looked at Jane. “How do you feel about fluids?”

“Is it a kind of lubricant, or—”

“Well, what do you think,” said Tony, “if you’re going to go shoving things in there.”

“Is it really that big?” Jane asked. “Like a cavity? Or a—”

“It’s really that big. You can put your whole hand in. Ask Pepper. Right up to the wrist. If your hands are small. You’ve got to have small hands, or you’re gonna stretch—”

“Oh, God. Stop.” Pepper covered her face with a hand, but she was laughing. “Tony, just stop.”

“You did,” said Tony. “She did. Reached right in there—what?” He raised his brows at Pepper, who was glaring. “Are you jealous? Because if you want—”

“Dearest,” Pepper said.

“But it really comes out?” said Jane. “Can I—”

“Only on Tuesdays. I mean—” Tony glanced at Pepper. “We’re booked on Tuesdays. Anna-Marie. Maybe a Wednesday. We’ll see if we can fit you in.”

“This conversation is over,” said Pepper.

Tony looked at her innocently. “You started it.” He turned back to Jane. “I meant that literally, about fitting you in.”

The thing was, it was completely unclear whether he was serious. It was completely unclear whether Jane was even following their conversation; it was completely unclear whether Pepper was amused or upset or embarrassed or all three. Bruce just kept trying to concentrate on the wires.

They made no sense.

“Hey Steve,” said Tony.

When Bruce looked up again, Steve was walking out of the elevator.

“We’re working,” Tony said. “It’s very important.”

“Pretty sure you were letting Jane feel up your chest,” Steve said. He was carrying a hunk of metal.

“Like I said, very important,” Tony said.

“I know,” said Steve. “I felt it too.” Tony just stared at him, and Steve gave him that mischievous smile. “The arc reactor, I mean.” Something twitched in Tony’s face, and Steve brought the metal over to the framework, near Bruce. “Hey, Doctor Banner,” he said, and smiled a new smile.

“I’m going to see about getting these fans hooked up,” said Pepper. She leaned up and kissed Tony on the temple, probably because he was still just staring at Steve. Walking across the roof, she bent to inspect a large fan, pulling on the power cord.

“You have a star,” Jane said. She was looking with fascination at Tony’s arc reactor; quite possibly, she hadn’t stopped since he let her touch it. “In a canister. In your chest.”

“Show’s over.” Tony looked down at her. He didn’t really seem amused any more. “Let’s get to work.”

Jane’s hands went to her hips. “Has anyone ever told you you have mood swings?”

“Yes,” said Tony, and stalked over to the elevator.

“What’s his problem?” Jane asked, coming over to where Bruce was working on the Flux Accelerator. “I brought the navigation system.”

“That’s good,” said Bruce. “Pepper said she was going to get the holodesk up here. I’m not sure how, since she—”

“She hired a crew,” Steve said. They looked over at him, and Steve went on, “Some of the guys she’d already hired to help move and set-up for their barbeque; she just got them to help get our equipment up here instead.”

“Convenient,” said Jane.

“They’re great guys.” Steve was soldering the metal onto the framework. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time with them, actually. They don’t know that, though, so every time I have to pretend like I don’t know them.”

“Fascinating,” said Jane.

“So,” Bruce said, fiddling with the wires. “I’ve been thinking about this Princess Leia thing, Jane, and it’s just not going to work when you’re so obviously Spock.” Jane laughed, and Bruce glanced over at Steve. “Hey, Steve. Have we managed to give you a character on any of these days? I’m guessing Pepper is Deanna.”

“Tony says she’s Uhura,” said Steve, “but that’s because that’s the one he’s attracted to, I think.”

“So, who are you?” Bruce asked, because neither Kirk nor Picard seem quite right.

“Well, it’s mostly unanimous.” Putting down the soldering iron, Steve stood up. Bruce glanced up at him; the sun was behind him, and Bruce could only think, definitely one of the captains. “Janeway,” said Steve.

*

By the time Pepper’s crew got done, one of Tony’s holodesks, computers, tables, chairs, tents, and fans were all set up, as well as various bits of metal-smithing equipment that Bruce didn’t recognize. Pepper paid the crew and they went their separate ways.

Jane was working on setting up some of the programming using the information they were still getting from the crystals. JARVIS was still scanning them, and Bruce was working on the other end of it: setting up hardware in the Flux Accelerator that would run Jane’s program. Steve and Tony were working on the arc reactor, and Pepper went to order dinner.

It was a hot day, even with the fans and tents. Then Tony went to pick up a drill, and Bruce was talking about part of the program when Jane stopped and said, “Okay, remember what I said about He-man?”

Bruce followed her gaze. Steve had taken off his shirt to reveal the tank top underneath.

“Because that . . . um.” Jane started chewing on her stylus, and didn’t appear to notice. Her cheeks were pink and sort of getting pinker.

“Hey, what are you guys—” Tony came out of the elevator, wearing gloves and holding a drill. He followed Jane’s gaze and stopped. “Doing,” he said.

Bruce pulled the keyboard over to him and started pecking away at Jane’s code. Just until they stopped being distracted.

“We were talking about He-man,” Jane said. “And Simba.”

Tony didn’t say anything, so Bruce glanced up. Tony had his lower lip in his mouth and was slowly releasing it, scraping it against his upper row of teeth. Bruce looked away, and his gaze fell again on Steve.

Turning back to his screen, Bruce stared at it blankly.

“Simba?” said Tony.

“You know, the lion,” said Jane.

“Lion?” said Tony.

“I’d do him,” said Jane.

“Okay, toots,” Tony said, and finally didn’t sound strained. “Let me tell you a little something about cats, because if you really have a thing for lions, you’re gonna be real surprised when you—”

“I didn’t mean realistically.” Jane took the stylus out of her mouth and waved it at Bruce. “He said he’d do a spaceship.”

Tony didn’t say anything for a moment, and Bruce had never met her, but suddenly he knew exactly where Darcy Lewis was coming from.

Tony made a little sound. “A spaceship, Bruce?”

Bruce swallowed and kept his eyes on the computer screen. “They don’t have barbed penises. So I’m pretty sure they’d be okay.”

Tony made the little sound again. “No barbed penises. Okay, check. Any other restrictions?”

“Um,” said Bruce.

“Tony, did you want—oh.” Pepper had come over toward them, phone in hand, but she’d stopped, and was staring at Steve. “Oh,” she said again.

“Lion got your tongue,” Tony said, his voice flat.

“It’s so different to see him build something,” Pepper said.

“It’s mine,” said Tony. “He’s building my thing. Mine. I invented it.”

“Mm-hm,” Pepper said. “You look like you need to cool down. Maybe I should’ve had the guys set up a sprinkler up here.”

“There’s already water everywhere,” Tony said. He didn’t exactly sound happy about it.

“You can drink some of it,” Pepper said. “I’m pretty sure you can drink—oh, about a quarter of it.”

“Thank God; it’s hot; I’m dying of thirst.” Tony paused. “Can we get margaritas?”

“Work,” said Pepper.

“Coronas,” said Tony. “That’s like making love in a canoe.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“We haven’t done that?” Tony sounded a little happier, now. “We should.”

“I thought you were having a problem with all the water,” Pepper pointed out.

“The water is mocking me,” said Tony. “It’s mocking me, and I want my quarter like—like right now. Can I have it right now?”

“I thought you wanted a Corona?”

“Fuck Coronas,” said Tony.

“That sounds significantly less exciting than making love in a canoe,” said Pepper.

“You’d be surprised,” said Tony.

“I’ve been thinking about positive and negative energy pairing,” said Jane, in a dreamy sort of way. She was still looking at Steve. “If you put two pairings close to each other, the negative aspects would find a constructive synthesis. They could induce each other to a deviated course—”

Tony stared at her. “You’re not part of the solution, Jane. You’re part of the problem.”

Jane’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Tony has a drinking problem.” Pepper patted Tony’s arm.

“Really?” Jane just sounded interested.

“Sometimes he wants to drink everything in sight,” Pepper said. “We’re working on it.”

Jane’s brow furrowed further. “Then maybe he shouldn’t have any Corona.”

“Not that kind of drinking problem.” Pepper’s voice was airy. “Though that could use work too.”

“Jesus, Pepper,” Tony said, but didn’t actually sound that upset.

Tony and Pepper were talking in code. They were talking in a private code, a set of in-jokes only meant to be understood between the two of them, and the problem was that Bruce still understood what they were talking about. He understood exactly what they were talking about. He really shouldn’t, but he did.

*

They worked on the roof for the rest of the day, and on into the evening.

Steve had the right idea; it was pretty hot up there. Pepper didn’t rig up any sprinklers, but she did bring Bruce a t-shirt. He’d been wearing long-sleeves, because that was what he usually wore, when she handed him the t-shirt and said, “This is the only one I could find without any obscenities or band logos.”

Bruce didn’t mind, and he felt a bad about always suspecting her of an ulterior motive, so he put it on. Structurally he was a little broader than Tony, but certainly less muscled, so it fit alright. There was an ouroboros on it. On Tony, it would have circled the arc reactor.

He only began to regret it later, when Tony saw him and stopped mid-sentence, eyes fixed on the snake circling the center of Bruce’s chest. Bruce didn’t feel bad anymore, because obviously he should be suspecting Pepper of ulterior motives, and this time he didn’t even know what it was. Tony didn’t tell him.

After the sun set the air stayed hot, humidity causing the heat to cling. They were into the wee hours by the time they were ready to try opening the wormhole. Earlier, there had been fireworks. They’d been beautiful from the top of Stark Tower—gold and red, white and blue, green. The arc reactor, when they turned it on, was a brilliant cerulean, setting the floodlights Pepper had had set up to shame. There weren’t many stars visible in Manhattan in general, but it was a clear night, and Vega was on the top of the sky.

“Do the honors,” Tony said, and Steve touched one of the screens.

“Is it supposed to look like something’s happening?” Pepper said.

Steve looked at Tony. “Is it?”

Tony frowned. “We haven’t gotten this far before?”

“Not with this particular design. Usually we—”

Then there was a tiny clink as the vacuum chamber broke, the hairline fracture beginning from the point in the glass that had collapsed with the wormhole. For a long moment, they couldn’t see anything. Then the air above the Flux Accelerator shimmered, and the shimmer shot up into the air. The arc reactor glowed incandescently—so bright it almost hurt to look at—then abruptly faded to a dull grayish blue. Suddenly it went dark, and the world was silent.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Pepper finally asked.

“Sure,” said Tony.

Pepper looked around. “What next?”

Tony said, “How about we—”

And then the world was blue.

Stars twinkle because their apparent size is so small they’re practically dimensionless, and the refraction of the atmosphere bends the light away from that tiny point. Bruce had figured it out one day when he’d stood outside a pool, looking through them gate. He’d been ten. He didn’t know how to swim—well, he knew in theory. But for some reason, he’d figured taking off his shirt would be a bad idea.

Water is denser than air and it refracts the light more—patterns of light and dark across the pool. He’d looked at that water—all that sparkling, pristine water—and wondered what it would be like to slip below the surface—all the way in. Deep in, covered by that smooth cool surface, down to where the light and dark all looked blue, and it didn’t matter anymore.

When Bruce opened his eyes, the blue flash of light was over, and the world was back to normal.

Tony, Pepper, and Jane all started talking at once. Tony sounded angry; Pepper sounded scared; Jane was trying to figure out what had happened. Steve was looking around at the rest of them in confusion.

Tony reached out for Pepper’s elbow; then he turned on Steve. “Has this happened before?”

“What?” said Steve. “What happened?”

Tony frowned. “You didn’t—” He cut himself off, then turned to Bruce. “You?”

It took Bruce a moment. Then he nodded. “Yes.”

Tony turned back to Steve. “But not you.”

Glancing at Bruce, a little helplessly, Steve said, “What are you talking about? What happened?”

Bruce tried to put into words what he had seen, and failed utterly.

“A flash,” said Jane, standing up from behind the computer. She tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “It was a blue flash. Like . . .”

“An arc reactor,” said Tony. “Swimming pools. Cap’s sparkly pants.”

“I thought it looked like a Van Gogh,” said Pepper.

“My God,” Tony said, letting her go. He turned away. “It was full of stars.”

Steve looked at Bruce in concern. “Is that what you saw?”

“Stars?” Bruce said, just to be sarcastic. “Uh—yeah. That’s what I saw.”

“Hey.” The concern kicked up a notch. “You okay?”

“Oh.” Bruce realized his hands were clenched into fists. “Fine. I’m okay.” He thought about it. “Are you okay?”

Smiling briefly, Steve squeezed his shoulder. He just forgot sometimes, and it was okay. It was really okay, and then there was lightning.

Going still behind the computer, Jane looked up, and thunder crashed. The wind picked up around them, whipping her hair around her head. Her face tipped up toward the sky, and Bruce felt a cold drop of rain slither down between his shoulder blades.

Bruce had been raised Catholic, but he had never believed in God. It wasn’t only that an all-knowing, all-powerful entity seemed unlikely, considering the well-structured chaos of the universe. Nor was it that a being who could judge his actions was unpleasant to him. It was the fact that to believe in God seemed to him an abdication of responsibility; to believe in man, instead, seemed to suggest that we are the ultimate arbiters of good and of evil. We, and no one else, can punish each other. We, and no one else, can forgive each other. We are the only ones strong enough to determine our own fate.

This was the reason that Bruce could not stand beside Iron Man as the Hulk. This was the reason that the idea of the Avengers inspired a vague sense of wrong. This was why Bruce didn’t want to build anything with Chitauri space ships, or build time machines with the Flux Accelerator, or learn exactly how the Tesseract worked.

The idea of Thor made Bruce deeply uncomfortable.

Lightning crashed again, and Thor landed, falling to one knee on impact. In one hand he held the Tesseract, contained within the device Selvig had made. In his other hand, he held his hammer at the ready. Looking around, Thor saw them, and then saw Jane.

“Jane.” He took two great strides toward her, then stopped and looked around. “You are not under attack?”

She stared at him. “You’re here.”

“We’re probably being attacked somewhere,” said Tony.

“Thor,” said Steve, stepping forward.

Thor put his hammer through a loop of leather at his side. “What is happening here?” he asked Jane.

Jane looked down, the long curve of her hair partially hiding her face. “Steve Rogers needs your help,” she said. When Thor reached out toward her, she subtly shifted out of his way, chin lifting. “I believe you’ve met before.” She did not look happy to see him.

Thor’s hand caught in mid-air, and then he turned back to Steve and Tony. “Cap’s been living the same day over and over again,” Tony said.

Bringing down his hand, Thor said, “The same day?”

“We felt a flash of blue,” said Jane. “Except Steve. Steve didn’t feel it.”

Brow furrowing, Thor looked around at all of them again. It really was a rather massive brow. Bruce had only ever seen him in his armor, but he guessed it made sense Thor didn’t wear it all the time. He was in some leather jerkin-type thing over something that looked like linen—roughhewn, but soft, with pants that really reminded Bruce of the word “buckskin” and high boots. “I came because a doorway opened from here to Asgard,” said Thor. “It activated the Tesseract.”

“Activated?” Steve said, and swallowed.

“We opened a wormhole,” said Tony.

Thor frowned. “A worm—”

“A bridge,” said Jane. “Like you talked about.”

Thor’s frowned deepened. “The Bifrost is broken. How did—”

Jane nodded toward the Flux Accelerator. “With that.”

Thor put down the device with the Tesseract, then put his hammer on top of it. Moving closer to the Flux Accelerator, he said, “It is the device that helped open the portal for the Chitauri.” He looked back at them. “Why did you save it?”

“Ah,” said Tony, coming over to the machine as well. “That would be me. What, you wanted me to destroy it?”

Thor scowled. “Why would you not?”

Tilting his head, Tony said, “How about we destroy internal combustion engines, while we’re at it? We could all ride horses, just like you.”

Thor appeared unmoved. “Such equipment is dangerous.”

“Interesting.” Tony waved his hand at Thor. “So, your little accessories—they’re harmless too, right? Just a little cosmic bling?”

“Tony,” Steve said.

Tony turned on him. “What? You wanna ride horses too? Bet you you’d love it. You and Bruce riding horses into the sunset, when you know what would really save the environment? And be less hassle in the first place? Electric cars.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Doctor Banner,” Steve said quietly.

“I see that the two of you have not gotten any more amicable since I saw you last,” said Thor.

“Right,” said Jane, crossing her arms over her chest. “Because the last time you saw them you left a phone number. Calling card. Some way to get in touch with you.”

Thor looked over at her, his expression gentling. “I am sorry.”

“Um,” said Bruce. When they looked at him, he realized his hand was moving over his knuckles. He tried to stop, looking at Thor. “So, do you know why the worm—bridge activated the Tesseract? Because that’s . . . really not what we were trying to do.”

“The Tesseract is a door.” Thor looked around at them. Apparently seeing incomprehension in their faces, he proceeded to further explain. “It opens when it hears a knock.”

“Great.” Tony gave him a rictus of a smile. “What’s the point of being omnipotent if not polite? What I want to know is—does it knock back?”

“Was that blue light the Tesseract?” Tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, Jane went closer to the Flux Accelerator—toward Thor. “Right after we opened the bridge?”

Thor had one arm crossed over his chest, the other stroking his chin, an obvious pose of thinking. “The Tesseract was made from the dust from whence the Tree grew,” he said, sounding like he was reciting something. “It holds within every root and branch, and all the channels in between—the pattern of the Tree of Life.” He shook his head. “It seeks alignment—to bend one branch to another. But if that branch is bent already, I do not know what other connection it may seek.”

There was a little silence.

“Cool story, bro,” Tony said at last.

“Could it . . .” Steve began, a little line between his brows. Looking at the Tesseract, he bit his bottom lip and released it. He looked up at Thor again. “Could it have anything to do with the day repeating?”

Thor still looked thoughtful. "This fugue state," he said. "Tell me more. It is only you who is experiencing it?"

Steve nodded. “I’ve lived it—one hundred and sixty-two times now.”

“We never remember any of it,” said Pepper. “I’m Pepper, by the way.” She extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet y—oh.” Thor took her hand and kissed it.

“It is an honor,” said Thor.

Pepper blushed, but she was smiling.

Thor looked over at the rest of them. “It is good to see fellow warriors again, and meet their friends.”

“Girlfriend,” Tony said quickly. “Also, I object to the term 'warrior' on principle, but 'warrior's friend' is even worse. Pepper's saved the world at least—” He pretended to count—"oh, two times."

“No, I haven't,” Pepper told Thor.

“Well, you didn't the last time,” said Tony. "Where were you? On vacation? Next time—"

“Actually,” said Pepper, and Thor turned to Steve.

“I do not know if the Tesseract’s activation had aught to do with the repetition of this day, but I do not know what else might cause such a phenomenon. You were not with Widow when she disabled the Tesseract—do I remember rightly?”

“No,” said Steve. “I was on the ground.”

“Is there any other occasion on which you may have interacted with it?”

Steve just looked at him for a moment, and Tony stopped talking to Pepper to turn and look at Steve.

“Don’t ask me,” said Jane. “It’s not like I’ve had anything to do with it.”

“Once Loki took it, none of us exactly got a good look at it,” Bruce said finally, because no one was saying anything. “Before that, Fury had it locked in a base underground.”

“But before that,” Pepper said, and she, too, turned to look at Steve.

Steve hadn’t looked away from Thor. “It was over seventy years ago,” he said.

“What happened?” asked Thor.

Steve pursed his lips, nodding once. “Someone named the Red Skull stole it from a grave,” Steve said finally. “It was buried there . . . a long time ago. He used it to—” He shook his head, lips flattening. “Whatever he did, I don’t think he used it properly. It killed him.”

“How?” said Thor.

“Yes.” Tony looked up at Steve. “How?”

“I . . . don’t know,” Steve said finally. “There was . . . a flash of blue. Then he just . . . disintegrated.”

“So no head melting,” said Tony. He nodded at Thor. “Ark of the Covenant’s got one on you.”

“What activated the disintegration?” Thor asked.

“He just touched it,” Steve said. “I thought he’d touched it before, but this was . . . different.”

“You mentioned a ‘blue flash’,” said Thor. “Can you tell me what it was like?”

“Like a cloud, the whole plane. Then—I don’t know, it was like a hole. It opened up.”

“What did you see?” said Thor.

“Blackness. Space.” Steve finally looked away, blue eyes slanting to the side. “It was . . .” He gestured with his hands, seeming to find words inadequate. “Beautiful.”

“You said the blue cloud enveloped the whole plane,” said Thor. “You mean . . .” He moved his hand in imitation of a bird. “An airship?” At Steve’s nod, Thor went on, “Were you in this airship?”

“Yes.” Steve stood very still.

Thor looked grim. “It is said that contact with the Tesseract may cause the consciousness to become open to all of the power flowing through the Tree. It is too much for any one mind.” He turned to Steve. “It is likely why your comrade fell.”

Steve shook his head. “He wasn’t my comrade.”

“I am sorry,” said Thor. “Nevertheless, you were in the region of its influence when it made this connection with a mortal mind. It is possible that it linked to yours as well, and through this link, the vein of your life is threading through leaves you were never meant to know.”

Steve’s gaze lowered, hidden by long lashes. His jaw looked hard, but his expression was otherwise blank.

Tony, however, looked seriously displeased. “If your little cube is dicking around with Cap’s brain,” he said, “why now?”

Thor, who had been looking at Steve with a strange kind of empathy, turned to Tony. “I do not know.”

“It just said, ‘bored now’, time to screw over more mortals? Didn’t have anything better to do, now it’s not on the table for galactic domination?”

“I do not believe the Tesseract gets bored,” Thor said, voice bland.

“Yeah?” Tony took a step closer. “What if someone on Olympus did? Maybe one of your little pals thought to himself—”

“Hey,” said Jane, moving so that her body partially shielded Thor. She was so little that even had she stood in front of him completely, she would not have blocked much.

“—maybe he’d have a little fun,” said Tony. “Or hey, I don’t know, your brother—”

“Tony,” said Steve, his voice quiet.

“—decided this being grounded shit was for teenagers—”

Thor’s features were hardening. “You have no knowledge about which you speak.”

“We’re just looking for a way to stop it,” said Pepper. Her voice was calm and conciliatory—peace-making, Bruce thought, and a warning. He didn’t know who it was for.

“Whaddya mean, Pep?” Tony turned on her. “We love it when Marvin the Martian loses his toys so that these pesky earthlings can—”

“Hey,” said Jane. “This isn’t Thor’s—”

“—clean up the mess. We love it when—”

“Stark did have a point,” Steve said, at last lifting his eyes.

“Gee, ya think?” said Tony.

“Why is it doing this now?” said Steve. “Why not seventy years ago, when Red Skull touched it?”

Thor shook his head. “I have some ideas, but I would not set them to stone. I do not have the tools here to see the twining of the branches. I must go back to Asgard.”

“What if his day starts again before you’re done?” said Tony.

“Asgard is another Realm,” said Thor. “It is not the same plane of timeline—I should not be affected by any loops in yours. I will speak to my father of your predicament,” he told Steve. Then: “Captain,” because Steve wasn't saying anything.

"Yes," said Steve, and looked away.

Frowning, Thor put a hand on his shoulder, and for a moment, Bruce thought of paintings—of God reaching out, of that perfect, first man, whom He had touched. Bruce had never thought about what Adam must have felt, just after the moment of Creation, what it would have been like to be one with God, a part of him, only to be left alone. Abandoned.

In S.H.I.E.L.D.'s file on Thor, it had been written that Jane Foster claimed there were Nine Realms. Midgard—Earth—was only one. Milton wrote that Hell had nine circles.

"I will come again," said Thor, and Bruce supposed that that was written somewhere too.

"Thank you," Steve said, his voice sounding tight.

Thor nodded once, then turned to Jane. "I would speak with you," he said.

For a moment, it didn't look as though Jane would acquiesce. Then she tilted her head, and moved with Thor a little bit away from the others.

Bruce watched Steve, who was watching Tony. Tony was staring daggers at Jane and Thor.

"It's not his fault," Steve said quietly, after a moment.

Tony swung around to face him. "What's not his fault?"

"He's trying to help," Steve said.

"Yep," said Tony. "That's great. Fuck-ton of good it'll do you. Or us, if that blue—"

"You don't know that." Steve's jaw was firm.

"You heard him, Steve. He doesn't have a fucking clue." Tony's gaze sliced over toward Bruce. "Does he?"

Bruce opened his mouth. He didn't know what to say.

"Christ," said Tony. "Grow a p—"

"I take my leave of you," Thor said. He'd come over with his hammer and the Tesseract. Jane was standing where he had left her, turned away.

"Thank you," said Steve.

"It was good to meet you," said Pepper.

Tony kept his mouth quite firmly shut, so Bruce said, "Bye."

Then, with a twist of the handle of the device holding the Tesseract, blue lightning seemed to cackle over Thor's body. At the last moment, Jane turned around. Then Thor was gone.

Tony took out his phone, thumb scrolling over the surface. Steve, Pepper and Bruce simply stood there, looking at the space where Thor had been. Jane turned away again. After a minute or two, Tony went over to the Flux Accelerator and starting moving his hand over the touch-screen interface.

"Do you know what he's doing?" Bruce asked finally.

"Knowing him," Steve said, "which I guess now I do fairly well, he's looking for an alternative solution."

"That would be my guess," said Pepper.

Bruce watched Tony for a moment. "With the Flux Accelerator?" he asked. "Is he going to try to skip over the day or . . ."

Steve just gave him this sad, reassuring smile. "He won't have time."

"Oh." Bruce's thumb moved over his fingers. "When does it—"

"About a minute and a half." Steve looked over at Tony. "He'll just keep going. He won't stop, even when I try to tell him there isn't any time left."

"He blames himself," said Pepper.

"For the day repeating?" Frowning, Steve turned back to her. "You've never said that before."

"Maybe you never needed to know it before."

"It's not his fault," said Steve.

Slowly, Pepper raised her brows. "You never blame yourself for things that aren't your fault."

"I try not to."

"I find that surprising."

Bruce looked over at Jane, who was still standing off to the side, arms wrapped around herself. "I'm . . ." He glanced back at Steve and Pepper, who were both tall and blond and very beautiful as they spoke of guilt. "I'll see how Jane's doing," Bruce said. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he turned away.

When he came up beside Jane, she was looking up at the stars, so he did too. She didn't say anything for a while, so he didn't either. "There's a Chinese legend," he said, after a while, "about the stars of the Summer Triangle."

"Altair and Vega were lovers," said Jane. "The Elders put the Milky Way between them to keep them separate." At last, she turned to look at him. "I guess that's what they mean by 'star crossed'."

"Niú láng and Zhinü."

"What?"

"Those were the lovers' names."

Jane shivered, and Bruce tried to think of something else to offer, some bit of comfort. When he looked up at the stars, he couldn't think of anything. They looked cold and hard, even though he knew with a certainty stronger than what he felt about most things on Earth that they were very hot, burning up all their fuel just to shine so brightly.

"I always thought it was interesting that different cultures had different constellations," said Bruce, even though he hadn't thought that, always. He didn't used to care. "People see different patterns. If I'm getting it right, it was the Mayans who actually made pictures with the spaces in-between the stars, instead of the stars themselves."

"I used to think I understood the universe," said Jane. "I knew I didn't, but I still thought I did. Deep down."

Bruce knew exactly what she was talking about.

"I don't know anything," said Jane. "I don't understand anything. There's too much; it's so much. We still can't reach it, and I—"

A phone rang.

Bruce rolled over on the mattress, then sat up.

His phone was ringing.

He was on a mattress.

Bruce grabbed his phone off the cardboard box. Caller ID said Steve.

Chapter Text

Fumbling with the phone, Bruce pressed the button that said Talk. “What—”

“Hey,” Steve started to say, the rumble of traffic in the background. “It’s repeating—”

Bruce’s hand was tight on the phone. “What the hell is going on?”

“It’s okay,” Steve said over the roar of road noises. “It’s repeating for everyone.”

“Not okay.” Bruce was going to crush the phone. “Not—” He forced himself to take a deep breath.

“Calm down,” said Steve. It was an order, not a request.

Once Bruce had woken in a cave, slivered in a rock somewhere. When he’d crawled out of it, he’d found a sheer drop over a thousand feet down. Another time he’d woken in a city park in Bogotá, and the trees had been on fire. The artificial creek had been on fire; the streets in the distance had been on fire, and to this day he did not know if he had set it or not. Once he had woken up in a kitchen cupboard in Nizhny-Novgorod, and it wasn’t because he’d fallen asleep there as the Hulk. He’d just been cold, and had had nowhere else to go.

Bruce took a deep breath. “What do you mean, ‘repeating for everyone’? What does that mean?”

For a moment, all he could hear on the other end of the line was traffic—a honking horn, yelling, a car alarm.

“Steve,” Bruce said. “Tell me what—”

“It’s repeating for the whole world, Doctor Banner,” Steve said. “Everyone remembers. It’s on the news.”

They had activated the Tesseract, Thor had said. They had—

“What news there is,” Steve added.

Bruce could feel the pressure building up in his chest; his hand was too tight on the phone—“We did this,” he said. “This is what we did. We're the ones who—Christ. We don't even know—”

“Doctor Banner,” said Steve. “Do what I say, right now. Calm down. Listen to my voice.”

Bruce tried to calm down. He tried to listen to Steve’s voice.

“Stay focused. Get dressed. Take a shower. Don’t pay attention to the news. I need you to be ready so when I get there, we can get to Stark Tower as soon as possible.” A loud honk came down the line. “Doctor Banner?” Steve said. “Can you do that for me?”

I’m not a child, Bruce almost snapped, but didn’t, because he was kind of acting like one.

“Say that you can do that,” Steve said. “Doctor Banner. Right now.”

Bruce closed his eyes. “Alright. Okay. Yes.”

“Good,” said Steve. “Is it better now?”

“I’m fine,” Bruce said, loosening his hand on the phone. “Fantastic." He thought about it for a moment. "How are you?”

“Fine, Doctor Banner.” The smile in his voice was brief. “Make coffee. Set up a chess board. Do a crossword. Start making noodles if you have to.”

“Noodles?”

“Keep busy,” said Steve. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Everything’ll be alright.”

Bruce turned the phone off, put it down. Of course everything would be alright. Steve would be there in ten minutes.

Bruce got up, didn’t take a shower. Got dressed, because in the shower you could stop to think and worry and think and that was why Steve had told him to make noodles, so Bruce grabbed his laptop and went into the kitchen area. He’d finally gotten the wireless set up a month ago, so he opened it up and turned on a live radio stream.

“—confirmed that everyone is experiencing the same phenomenon, which physical evidence supports,” said a new reporter. “We’re getting a report about the minor earthquake that occurred yesterday in the Philippines, the effects undone, and reports of the—yes, that’s confirmed as well, the fire in southeastern California also reversed. Richard, can you tell us whether we’re making any headway on a scientific explanation for this—this—what are we even calling this?” There was a pause, then: “It looks like we still don’t have Richard on the line, but my—Paul on audio says they’re calling this a ‘Groundhog’s’—”

Hand shaking only slightly, Bruce closed his laptop, and the broadcast stopped. God. They had sought out a god. They had depended on a higher power, and in so doing, they had remade the world. This was the answer to their prayers. Bruce’s hands tightened on the counter. He could rip it off. He could use it to smash the laptop and the whole goddamn apartment and—

Calm down, Steve had said. Do what I say right now.

Don't pay attention to the news.

Bruce got the beans out of the refrigerator, measured out a portion, poured them into the grinder. Ground them up then put the water on to boil. Got out the coffee pot that Natasha had given him and a filter, unfolded the filter and put the grounds into it, set the filter in the pot. Got out a cup and washed it out and then went to go put on shoes. Natasha had also given him those and he wondered if she was repeating today too, but of course she was. Everyone was. It was on NPR.

Finished with his shoes—long since finished—Bruce stood, went into the kitchen. The water was boiling so Bruce poured it in the coffeemaker. As he waited for the water to go through, he dried the mug and put it away and got out the thermos and rinsed that too. He’d gotten a thermos when he started teaching at the college. He’d been sort of stupidly satisfied around two and a half years ago when he’d realized he could handle drinking caffeine, that it wouldn’t make him too edgy. He could be just like a normal person who could be startled and have nightmares and ride in fast cars even though he didn’t like that sort of thing. He could run if he wanted to. He could fall.

Bruce poured the coffee into the thermos, screwed on the top, and went outside. When he got out to the curb he realized that he was early. There was an old lady on the opposite side of the street walking down the sidewalk in a robe and curlers, looking lost and aimless. There was a woman standing at the door of her apartment down the street yelling at a man standing on the outside. A car came careening down the street almost directly toward the woman in curlers, then swerved. Somewhere someone was breaking things—bottles. Lamps. Maybe a cat.

Waiting for Steve on the curb, Bruce stood on the balls of his feet, then rocked back on his heels, stood on the balls of his feet, rocked back. Opened and closed the flip top on the travel mug, opened it again, closed it, didn’t drink out of it. Rocked back on his heels, opened, stood up, closed, rocked back, open.

The couple arguing outside the apartment was getting more heated. It was hard not to notice. It was hard not to care: a woman and a man. They were probably confused—trying to figure out why they had not awoken this morning in the same state and place they had ended the night before. Or maybe they had already realized that today was yesterday, and had already made the connection that there might not be a tomorrow. They could do anything they wanted today; nothing would matter, and Jesus Christ—a world without consequences—man without consequences—

It would be okay. Steve was coming. Do what I say.

He could just go say something to the couple. Just something calm and innocuous, just so they had a chance to catch a breath, just so the man didn’t do anything stupid. Bruce had done things like that before. It wasn’t like he never stepped in when there were people getting hurt. It was just, this time—it wasn’t going to help, was it, because that man could kill her if he got too angry, and it wouldn’t matter, because tomorrow—he could kill them both and they would finally—stop arguing—

Steve roared up on the curb, took one look at Bruce’s face, and got off the bike.

“I made coffee,” said Bruce, and thrust the thermos toward him.

Taking it, Steve glanced down at it, then back up at Bruce. “What do you need me to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Bruce. “Drink it?” His hand touched the knuckles of his fist. “I forgot your creamer. Sorry.”

Steve looked around the street, at the people arguing, the woman with her bathrobe. He looked at his bike, then got the big leather bag with the shield off the back. “Let’s go get the creamer,” he said.

Bruce licked his lips. “What about—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve said, not even glancing at the bike again. “We’ll get S.H.I.E.L.D. to take us to the Tower. Come on. Hold this.”

Steve gave Bruce the thermos, put the strap of the bag over his back and took out his phone as they went back to the apartment building.

Bruce wanted to ask who he was texting—who specifically, but didn’t. He didn’t actually want to think any more about how they needed S.H.I.E.L.D. because Bruce Banner couldn’t keep his cool. That was probably why Steve was texting instead of talking about it in the first place.

On that episode of Next Generation, the Enterprise blew up at the end of the loop, but then the loop would start over again and the Enterprise was fine. Then it would blow up; then the loop would start over again, and it would be fine. Over and over. If it was the whole world, the whole world could blow up, and it would be fine. Bruce could even get upset about it, if he wanted to—Hulk out—slaughter thousands—and it would be fine. Anyone could do anything they—

“The first twenty days,” said Steve, “I kept trying to fix it. The repeating day. Like throwing myself into a brick wall, over and over, and every time I had to convince you all that it was even happening. I started thinking maybe I was just crazy.” They stepped onto the elevator. “I had to take some days off.”

“Days off.”

“Pretend it wasn’t happening,” said Steve. “Regroup. Just do what I wanted to for a while.” He went back to texting. Steve had learned how to handle him—distracting Bruce from his thoughts.

Bruce wasn’t sure what to think about that. “So you really did play all those sports with Tony?” he asked finally.

“Most of them,” Steve said, as they stepped out of the elevator. “Basketball, football, and soccer, anyway. I might have sort of bent the truth on some of the others.”

“You’re not supposed to lie,” said Bruce.

“Who says? I was just sparing Stark’s feelings.” Steve typed out a few more things on his phone.

“No water polo?”

The side of Steve’s mouth quirked, but he just kept looking at the phone. “There was water polo. But Stark was on my team.”

“Team?”

“Only fair,” said Steve. “You got both Clint and Natasha.”

“Uh,” Bruce said. “I don’t know how to play water polo.”

“You learned,” said Steve. “Natasha and I taught you.”

Bruce tried to imagine Steve and Natasha teaching him water polo, and had to stop almost immediately. “How did you even get me in a pool?” he asked.

“Easy.” Smiling, Steve slipped his phone into his pocket. “I asked you.”

Bruce was going to ask why, and then realized he was just going to keep thinking about Steve and Natasha and the pool, so he didn’t. Instead, he opened his door, and let Steve into his apartment.

Bruce had started keeping creamer in the refrigerator for Steve about a month ago. Steve liked some brand name stuff that was vanilla flavored and pre-sweetened. Bruce guessed it meant Steve was twenty-first century these days.

“Helicopter will be here in fifteen minutes,” Steve said.

“I’m sorry I’m . . .” Bruce tried to think of how to word it as he got Steve’s creamer out, “not dealing well with this.”

“It’s alright.” Steve kept his easy smile. “Panicked when it first happened to me. Guess you don’t have that option.”

Bruce got out the mug again, poured Steve a cup from the thermos, then gave Steve the mug, the creamer, and a spoon. “It’s disconcerting,” was all he said.

“No consequences.” Steve opened the creamer and started pouring it in. “That’s challenging.”

“But not for you.” Bruce spread his hands out on the counter.

“You said that once before,” Steve said, closing the creamer. He stirred his coffee with his spoon. “You seemed to think that my sense of right and wrong would remain whether there were consequences to my actions or not, that my sense of goodness isn’t relative to outcome, but to some objective morality.”

Bruce was staring at his hands. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Steve sipped his coffee. “But it doesn’t follow that I always behaved rightly.”

Quickly, Bruce glanced up. “What did you do?”

“Some things I’m not proud of.” Steve smiled, a trifle ruefully, and then immediately changed the subject. “This is going to be hard on a lot of people.”

There was always this kind of air of melancholy around Steve—hard to see, sometimes, because Steve smiled so much and didn’t really ever talk about being sad. When he did it was in such a frank and goddamn sympathetic manner—as though he was just amused by what seemed to be his lot in life, and you were the one deserving of kindness and his understanding. By the time he was done, you hardly even remembered that Steve just had it so fucking hard, and when you did, you wanted to kick yourself because Steve wanted you to forget, and Steve got what he wanted all the damn time, except that he also never did.

Bruce tried not to act like he had it worse than everyone else, but never quite managed. At least he wasn’t Steve fucking Rogers, and it broke Bruce’s heart.

“I feel like I should be out there,” Steve went on. “There’ll most likely be riots.”

“What does Tony think?”

“Not sure yet.” Steve paused. “Thor’s at Stark Tower.”

“I guess he was right about not being on our timeline.” Bruce’s hands tightened on the counter. His laptop was still there. “I guess it’s too much to ask that he actually knows what’s going on.”

Steve shook his head. “Right now, he’s our only hope.”

Bruce forced himself to let go of the counter, shoving his hands into his pockets instead. “That worked so well the first time.”

“You think he did this?”

“Or we did.”

“You can’t be sure.”

Bruce almost laughed. “You think it’s a coincidence?”

“I guess I think it’s arrogant to assume complete responsibility.” Steve put his mug down, wrapping both hands around it.

There wasn’t actually a reprimand in Steve’s voice. Bruce wished there was. “I’m not known for my modesty,” was all he said.

“I’m the one who asked for help, Doctor Banner,” said Steve. “I’m the one who put the whole thing in motion. It was my problem to begin with. Do you blame me?”

Fidgeting, Bruce didn’t meet his eyes. He should probably blame Steve. He blamed himself, certainly, but he also blamed Tony just a little. Even Jane and Pepper, and definitely Thor. But Steve—

This was actually becoming a problem.

“You don’t think it’s anyone’s fault?” said Bruce.

“I think in some situations, it’s pointless to assign blame,” said Steve. He drained the rest of his cup, and handed it to Bruce. While Bruce washed it out, Steve checked his phone, then put it away. “Wanna go wait on the roof?”

“Okay,” said Bruce.

Steve nodded at the thermos. “You should bring the rest of that coffee. She’ll appreciate it.”

Bruce screwed the top back on the thermos.

*

Natasha brought a helicopter, wearing a headset and manning the controls like she did it all the time—which she probably did, Bruce realized belatedly.

“Get in,” she yelled over the roar of the chopper.

“Coffee,” he yelled back, and put the thermos in the holder between them.

“Belt up,” was all she said.

Bruce did what she said, Steve getting in the back and pulling on the belt as well. Then they were taking off, and Bruce looked down at the city.

Even as they rose higher into the air, Bruce could see that the streets below did not look normal. Cars were backed up everywhere—as if, by leaving Manhattan, New Yorkers could turn back time. Wherever they were trying to go, people seemed to want to get there fast. Pedestrians wandered just as aimlessly, while others stood in little knots. The helicopter was too far up to make out their body language or expressions, but Bruce was guessing the riots Steve was expecting were soon about to start.

Approximately five hundred thousand babies were born every day. Five hundred thousand women giving birth today, when they had done it yesterday. Bruce didn’t know how many women miscarried every day. How many people had strokes. Aneurysms. Seizures, heart attacks, the slow passage into death from the disease of having lived too long. On average, three hundred thousand people died every day; of those some were accidents. Some were murders; some were the result of specific behaviors, but Bruce didn’t know how many could be prevented. How many people that had died yesterday, but would live today.

He did, however, know what it was like to commit suicide. He knew what it was like to wake up on the other side, knowing you had failed.

“Bruce,” Natasha yelled, over the roar of wind.

Bruce ripped his eyes away from the streets below, and looked at Natasha.

Since his recovery from turning into a twelve-year-old, Bruce had been sparring with her. She was teaching him aikido. Some marshal arts were more about forms; they could be non-combative. Like t'ai chi, they could be practiced in solitude, but aikido was always practiced with a partner. It was about learning the other person, how to move with their movement, take advantage not with your own force but with theirs. Bruce needed to learn to be with other people. Natasha said he knew enough about being alone.

“You’re okay,” Natasha said.

“Yeah,” Bruce said, thumb running over his fingers.

“Good.” Natasha took off her headset. “Now one of you want to explain to me what the fuck is going on?”

*

When they got to Stark Tower, Thor and Tony were talking to Fury, whose face was on one of Tony’s projection panels. Fury looked dissatisfied—well, Fury always looked dissatisfied. But more dissatisfied than usual.

“Here,” Tony said, picking a phone off the table and touching something on it. Handing it to Thor, he said, “Keep talking.” He walked over to Steve, Natasha and Bruce, hands sliding into his pockets. “Just hold it up to your ear,” he told Thor, without turning around. “Hey Romanoff. You checking up on our progress?”

“Hello, Director Fury,” Steve said, coming further into the room.

“Captain Rogers,” said Fury. “Sounds like you neglected to mention some important information yesterday.”

Tony just went on talking to Natasha. “Maybe you want our help.”

Her brows went up. “Seems like I’m the one usually saving your ass.”

Bruce looked around. The Tesseract, encased in the device Selvig had made, sat on Tony’s bar. Fury looked like he was chewing out Steve, and Thor was still on the phone. Thor must have updated Tony and Fury before they’d gotten there, Bruce realized. Thor was probably talking to Jane.

“You don’t call,” Tony was saying to Natasha. “You don’t write; how else can I get you to visit?”

Natasha’s lips twitched. “You could ask.”

“Uh-huh.” Swiftly, Tony pinned his gaze directly on Bruce’s hands, as though he had already known what they were doing. Then he turned back to Natasha. “That what he did?”

Putting his hands in his pockets, Bruce said, “Did Thor learn anything in Asgard?”

Tony took the phone away from Thor, and put whoever-it-was back on speaker.

“—you tell me every time,” Fury finished saying to Steve. His voice rose. “Doctor Banner, glad you could make it.”

“Hi, Bruce.” Jane’s voice didn’t issue from a specific direction, just like JARVIS’s. “Hi Nat. Hi Steve.”

“Jane, can you give us the run-down?” Tony said, glancing at Thor. “I don’t think we all speak Beowulf.”

“Okay,” said Jane. “Originally, Thor thought the Tesseract was making Steve jump timelines.”

Something ticked in Thor’s jaw.

“Travel through the leaves of time,” Jane corrected, even though there was no way she could see Thor. She didn’t have a camera or a screen on her end. “Can you say what it is again?”

“Hœgr,” said Thor.

According to Thor—as understood by Jane—time was more than one dimension. They usually thought of time as linear, Jane explained—a straight line, proceeding in a single direction. On Asgard, they called the direction of time an arrow, but the arrow was merely a line across a plane. Time also had width—essentially, another dimension, which Asgardians called hœgr. It didn’t translate, Jane said, because there was no equivalent word in English.

“This may be a stupid question,” said Steve, “but how come the rest translates?”

“Not stupid,” said Bruce.

“Magic,” said Thor.

“Uh-huh.” Tony was sprawled on the couch, doing something on his tablet, acting like he wasn’t listening. “Google translate says that’s Viking for technology.”

“Universal translator?” said Bruce.

Tony flashed teeth at him. “I’m voting neural implants at birth.”

“What’s important,” said Jane, “is that it’s not just Steve whose traveling on a weird path through the hœgr. Thor says it’s all of Midgard. It has been since Steve started repeating days. We just weren’t aware of it.”

“But I was?” asked Steve.

Thor said, “Your connection to the Tesseract merely allowed you to sense the repetition when others could not. When you b—” He changed whatever he had been going to say. “—opened the portal yesterday in your attempt to contact me, the Tesseract reacted to Midgard’s path tangled path. It attempted to correct your direction. Instead of bending branches, it sought to unbend, but it did not have the energy necessary.”

“It backfired,” Bruce said. He glanced at Tony, who was still texting.

“Not exactly,” said Thor. “It could not align all the veins of Midgard, so it aligned one.”

“Don’t even bother asking what he means by that,” Tony said, without looking up.

“What do you mean by that?” Natasha asked, her tone bland.

“Consciousness—grunr, the mind,” said Thor. “Soul.”

“The gist is, it did to us what it apparently did to Captain Rogers in 1943,” said Fury. “Tapped into our consciousness. Made us aware of what’s happening.”

“But why?” said Steve. “Why is this happening to—Midgard?”

Jane took over the explanation again. At some point, she said, the path Midgard should have been taking through the plane of time had altered. The divergence itself may have been minor, according to Thor. However, because of the divergence, Midgard had encountered what he called a knot in the grain. “An immovable object in the time stream,” said Jane.

“An immovable object,” said Bruce. “Like what?”

“We’re working on that,” said Jane.

“The knot is like unto a whorl,” said Thor. “The intersection of a branch. The Tree grows primarily up, but sometimes also out.”

There was a little silence.

“I was never much a fan of botany,” Tony said flippantly. He was still doing something on the tablet.

“Um, right.” Jane blew out a breath. “Imagine the plane of time like a plane in space. You collide with an immobile object, bam. You bounce off, but the changed trajectory sends you right into the path of another object. That rebound bounces you back against the first object, and now you’re caught—back and forth and back and forth between immobile objects. The time it takes to move between those objects just happens to be almost exactly one day.”

“Pong,” said Bruce. He thought he heard Natasha murmur something about “old school,” but it was so low he couldn’t make it out. She wasn’t looking at him.

“What’s Pong?” said Steve.

“It was like this really low tech table tennis game,” said Jane. "Way back in the day."

“What is table tennis?” said Thor.

“Bruce, you’re the only one I like in this room.” Tony didn’t look up. “Just so you know.”

“He means,” said Fury, “A ball being passed back and forth between two paddles, over and over again, except the paddles don’t move, and we’re the ball.”

“Okay, Fury,” Tony said. “You’re allowed to come to our WarGames party, but only conditionally.”

“Our path diverged,” said Steve, brow furrowing. “So we weren’t supposed to hit the paddles?”

“You were not,” said Thor. “I do not yet know what caused the initial divergence. My father is looking into it.”

“You said the Tesseract connected to our consciousness,” Bruce said, glancing at Natasha. When she turned a steady gaze on him, he turned back to Thor. “What does that mean? What will it do to us?”

“I do not believe it was an attempt to harm you,” said Thor.

Tony let out a large laugh. When everyone looked at him, he looked up from his tablet. “Oh, sorry,” he said innocently. “IM.” Then he went back to his tablet.

He was upset about this, Bruce finally realized. Tony was really upset. For some reason, it had taken Bruce a while to figure it out.

“The Tesseract took control of Agent Barton,” Natasha told Thor. Her voice was as steady as her eyes.

Thor nodded. “I understand your concern. The Tesseract’s ability to link with consciousness is indeed what allowed Loki to control our friends, but in that instance, the Tesseract’s power was channeled by Loki. My father truly thinks that in this instance, the Tesseract was only seeking to correct—”

“Because your family is so trustworthy,” Tony said.

In an attempt to prevent further argument, Steve stepped forward. “You said the Tesseract was trying to straighten things out, but it didn’t have enough energy to straighten everything out.”

“That’s why it messed with our minds,” said Jane.

Thor nodded. “I believe that with enough energy, the Tesseract might be able to rectify the course of Midgard.”

“Enough energy,” said Bruce.

“He means you need to take that machine Stark really shouldn’t have anyway,” said Fury, “and open up another wormhole, except this time you give it enough power for the Tesseract to yank Earth through.”

“How much power?” said Natasha.

“We’re thinking all of it,” said Jane.

Steve frowned. “All of—what?”

“More power than we can possibly generate at a single time, given a day,” said Jane.

“Doctor Foster,” Fury began.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jane said, sounding acidic. “Does S.H.I.E.L.D. have a thousand nuclear warheads sitting around?”

Knowing S.H.I.E.L.D.—

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Tony said, finishing Bruce’s thought.

“Where did you get that figure?” Bruce asked Jane, glancing at Tony.

“Think about it,” Jane said. “It took a reactor five times the size of the one on this building just to open up a pinhole.”

“But the arc reactor on Stark Tower is what powered the device that let the Chitauri through,” said Natasha, a wrinkle appearing in her brow. “That was—bigger than a pinhole.”

“We had the Tesseract then,” said Steve.

“Exactly,” said Jane.

“But we have the Tesseract now,” Steve began. “Doesn’t that mean—”

Thor shook his head. “The Tesseract must remain in Asgard. In order to pull you through the hœgr—into correct alignment, the Tesseract itself must be correctly aligned. If it is here, you risk knocking yourself further out of alignment.”

Bruce glanced at Tony again. “You mean we need a Jovian mass.”

Tony stood up, walked over. “Present for you,” he said, giving Bruce the tablet. His hand stayed on Bruce’s arm as he announced to the room at large, “I designed a new reactor.”

“Just now?” said Steve. Then he started smiling. “That’s brilliant.”

“No,” Tony said briefly. “It’s not.” Hand sliding off of Bruce, he walked a step toward Fury’s image. “It’s the size of five football fields,” Tony said.

There was a beat, then Thor said, “Is it not powerful enough?”

Bruce scrolled through the calculations on the tablet. Steve was right; Tony was brilliant. Nevertheless: “It can’t be built in a day,” said Bruce.

“What if we diverted all the power on the grid?” asked Fury.

“Of New York City?” asked Jane, surprised. “That doesn’t—”

“Try North America,” Fury said blandly.

“You can do that?” Jane said. “Of course you can do that. Do you know my shoe size?”

“Six.” Bruce couldn’t even tell whether Fury was being sarcastic. Fury always sounded sarcastic.

“You may also have the use of my hammer,” said Thor. “It commands a considerable amount of energy.”

“Already factored in, Tool Time,” said Tony.

Bruce glanced down at the tablet in his hands. It had been factored in; according to the calculations, “Hagar the Horrible’s Hammer,” increased the capacity of an arc reactor by four hundred percent. “Should I even ask how you knew?” Bruce said.

“Those who work together often play together,” said Tony, walking back over to Bruce.

“What else do you need?” Fury said.

Tony took his tablet back. “Besides two years and eight tons of vibranium?” he asked, scrolling through the calculations. “I need some scientists.”

“We can get you those,” said Fury.

“Not just any scientists.” Tony kept working on the tablet. “I require good-looking ones.”

Fury didn’t look amused. “I’m sure—”

“Okay,” said Jane. “Here’s the deal, Director Fury. The Tesseract is my line of work—Erik too, but you’re not gonna have time to get to Örebro and back, and it’d be nice to get some hands-on action. This is what I do; you have to let me—”

“I already told you,” Fury said, in the annoyed affect that was so typical of him, “an agent is on the way to pick you—”

“Yeah,” said Jane. “Trouble is, I don’t trust you. Bruce, you there?”

“What?” Bruce said, startled.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. naysayers, unite,” Tony muttered.

Bruce glanced at him. It was true. Jane trusted Bruce because she knew he didn’t trust S.H.I.E.L.D.

“I’ll go,” said Natasha.

“Agent Romanoff,” said Fury. “You’re needed for other—”

“Sure, Jane,” Bruce said, not raising his voice to talk over Fury, but talking over him anyway. “You can trust Natasha.”

“I know,” said Jane. “Nat?”

“I’ll make sure you get here, Foster.”

Natasha didn’t even look at Fury, so surreptitiously, Bruce did it for her. He had no idea whether Natasha had told Fury about the age regression incident. It must have been how Jane got to be so trusting of Natasha, despite her S.H.I.E.L.D. connections. Bruce couldn’t tell what Fury knew by looking at Fury’s face, which he supposed was typical of S.H.I.E.L.D. just in general.

“Okay,” said Jane.

“I will go with Widow to ensure your safe passage to the Tower,” said Thor.

“No,” said Jane. “You stay there.”

Thor opened his mouth.

“It’s okay, Thor,” said Jane. “I forgive you.”

Thor’s features hardened. “I wasn’t—”

“We need your help now,” said Jane. “Can you help us?”

“I—yes.” Thor locked his hands behind his back. “I will do everything in my power to assist.”

“Great. Nat?”

“On my way,” said Natasha. Instead of leaving, she glanced at Bruce.

“Get to it,” said Fury.

“Yes, sir,” said Natasha, and left.

“Now,” said Jane. “How about you email me those arc reactor designs?”

*

While Tony sent the schematics to Jane and explained some details, Steve left the room, and Fury signed off. Fury probably had superiors to whom to report, but Bruce didn’t know. He’d never been able to find out who was really in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. Even Tony, who’d managed to hack the helicarrier, said he hadn’t found out.

Thor stood there frowning as Tony and Jane discussed the problem. Bruce guessed he should join the conversation, but he wasn’t actually sure what Tony thought he was going to do to help. Bruce’s area of expertise was—

“Your people will not take well to this.” Thor turned to Bruce.

Bruce swallowed. “They’re not really my people.”

Thor’s lips pressed together. Bruce couldn’t figure out whether it was a disapproving expression, or just Thor. “Surely there is a mechanism on Asgard that could produce the energy necessary,” Thor said.

“After careful consideration,” said Bruce, “I’m not really sure that’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“No.”

Bruce couldn’t tell whether that was agreement or denial, and there was probably a reason Bruce couldn’t translate Thor’s features. It was the same reason they couldn’t translate some of the words, and it wasn’t something they should be forgetting right now: Thor was an alien. An alien.

He was also their only hope. Bruce wasn’t all that great with hope. In fact he sort of sucked at it.

“Look,” Bruce said, turning to look up at Thor. “Thanks for—”

“Do not,” said Thor.

Bruce did not.

“I still do not know the cause of Midgard’s divergence,” said Thor. “I intend to find out.”

“Okay,” said Bruce. “I was going to thank you for trying to kick my ass on the helicarrier. Last year.”

Thor’s brows went up. His lips twitched. “Trying?” was all he said.

When Steve came back in the room, he wore the Captain America uniform.

“You’re going out,” Bruce said, walking over to him.

“Cap just likes his spangles.” Tony joined them, but only to hand Thor a phone. Thor moved away from them to talk to Jane, while Tony went over to the bar.

Steve gave Bruce a wry half-smile. “I’m not going to be much help designing reactors. Figured I’d be more useful on the streets.” Going over to the leather bag, Steve pulled out the shield. It had been reformed with the repetition of the day, as though it had never been melted down.

“Catch,” Tony called from over at the bar.

Something shiny came sailing through the air, and Steve caught it easily. “What’s this?” he said, turning it over. It was about the size of a dime.

“Nothing,” said Tony, coming back over toward them.

“Is it a tracking device?” Steve asked.

“Sure,” said Tony. “So we find your body.” Turning his back on Steve, he handed Bruce the tablet again. “We could get it down to four if I can invent a new way to pump the coolant.”

“Four football fields?” said Steve.

Tony rolled his eyes. Without turning around, he said, “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“You have work to do here,” Steve said, and Bruce realized it was in response to something Tony hadn’t said.

Yesterday, Bruce had simply assumed that Steve and Tony could have a conversation in which most comments were completely silent because Steve had had the conversation before. They hadn’t had this conversation before, though. Steve just knew that Tony was irked with him because Tony wanted to be out on the streets himself. Steve just knew Tony.

Tony grabbed his tablet back from Bruce. “See me putting on my fancy pants?” he snapped, still without turning around.

Steve slid the round piece of metal Tony had given him into a boot, then moved forward, put his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “You’ll fix it. You and Doctor Banner and Jane.”

“Yes, thank you.” There was no way to tell whether Tony’s light voice was sincere or sarcastic. He sidled away from Steve’s hand, his hand was still moving over his tablet. “Go save the world or something.”

“I will go with you,” said Thor, striding across the room.

Tony almost rolled his eyes again. Instead, he said, “JARVIS, speaker.”

“Jane Foster is offline,” said JARVIS.

Something ticked in Tony’s jaw. “She kicked you out,” he said, turning to Thor.

“She told me that I should—” Thor’s head tilted as he paused for thought. “I have the vague sensation of being manipulated,” he said at last.

“More like flat-out told what to do,” said Tony.

“Yes,” Thor admitted.

“Happens to the best of us,” said Steve.

Tony made a face that was almost like a wince. “Does it,” he said, and kept working on the tablet.

Thor looked thoughtful. “I have had comrades complain of being subject to feminine whims and wiles. I always thought them . . . ” He scowled. “Feeble-minded.”

“I sort of doubt it was a whim,” Bruce said. "Or a wile." He liked Thor less for it, and wished that he could stop blaming people for things that could not be helped. After all, he doubted Asgard was this glowing vision of gender equality. For one thing, religion in general tended to be—

Steve, however, totally seemed to think Thor could be blamed. “I thought you came from the land of the Valkyries,” he said, frowning.

“I do,” said Thor.

Tony’s lips twitched. “I bet you love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Thor frowned. “I do not know what—”

“Apocalypse,” said Tony. “Now.”

“It’s from a movie,” said Bruce.

“No, it’s not,” said Tony. “I mean Götterdämmerung. Outside. Right now. Get to work.”

Thor frowned some more. “The Ragnarök will not happen on Midgard,” he said.

“Götterdämmerung is the German translation,” said Steve. “What movie?”

“They used Ride of the Valkyries in a movie from the seventies,” said Bruce. “It was a famous scene.”

Steve looked thoughtful. “I do enjoy Wagner. Even if he was a—”

“Ride of the Valkyries?” said Thor.

“Take this,” Tony told Thor, handing him a shiny silver button just like Steve’s. “Why are you still here, anyway?”

Thor’s face might actually just be a permanent frown. “At times I believe that you are recondite on purpose.”

“It’s part of his schtick,” said Steve. “Let’s go.”

*

Once Thor and Steve were gone, Tony started talking.

“The first arc reactor at Stark Industries was over a hundred times the size of the one in my chest,” Tony said. “But that was the old design. The new design—” He ran his fingers over his tablet some more. “Eighty times smaller than that, five times as powerful.”

“You tracked Steve,” Bruce said. “When he was in Uganda.”

“It’s not a tracking device.” Tony handed Bruce his tablet, then went over to the bar.

Bruce scrolled through the calculations again. The hole they had opened the day before was smaller than the size of a penny, and the radius of the Earth was over six hundred billion times larger than that of a penny. Luckily, they didn’t need six hundred billion times more power, because the size of the wormhole expanded exponentially in direct relationship to the amount of power feeding it. According to these figures, though, they still needed a lot of it.

Bruce went over to the bar, where Tony had started new calculations on a different tablet. “You wanna be out there with him,” Bruce said. “With Steve. You don’t like that there’s rioting going on and Iron Man’s not there to stop it.”

“Riots happen,” said Tony.

Pressing his lips together, Bruce ran his fingers over his knuckles. “But you don’t like it.”

Tony slid the equations on his tablet away. “Remotely-operated monitoring apparatus, with neurally obtained vitals,” he said, pushing the tablet toward Bruce. “I’m thinking of calling it ROMANOV.”

On it was a heat image shaped suspiciously like Steve, with a sidebar containing stats—heartbeat, breathing, temperature, etc. “Romanov?” said Bruce.

“You know. Like the spy.” Tony pulled back the tablet, brushed the image away again.

"You spell it with a v?"

Tony frowned. "What would you spell it with?"

“You’re spying on Steve.”

“Not really,” said Tony. “He put it on.”

“What about when he went to Uganda?”

“Said he shouldn’t go,” Tony said, working through equations on his tablet again. “Told him you weren’t worth it.”

“Thanks for that,” Bruce said, smiling a little.

“Welcome.”

Bruce watched Tony’s calloused hand move over the tablet for a moment. “Did you put them on all of us?”

“All of who?”

“You did, didn’t you.”

Tony looked up then, and his expression was blank, closed. Inscrutable. “There you go,” he said, then slid the tablet across the bar. “Four football fields.”

Bruce looked down at the new calculations. Every time Bruce read Tony’s scrawls, he was surprised by the neatness of them. Tony often skipped over essential calculations, but in a linear way—unlike Bruce, who had a tendency to work in circles until he found out what was in the middle. Instead, Tony’s work was generally precise—very little extraneous equations, just like an engineer. Looking at the equations, his mouth went dry. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he said at last. “A wormhole of that size—”

“The Tesseract should stabilize it,” said Tony, taking back the tablet.

“Should,” said Bruce.

Looking across the room at nothing in particular, Tony did something with his tongue in his mouth—licked his teeth, grimaced. “I don’t like Thor any more than you do. Less,” he added, “because you’re—” Tony grimaced again, didn’t finish.

“Catholic,” said Bruce, for the sake of levity.

Tony just kept staring out his bank of windows, hand drumming impatiently on the bar. When he swiveled his gaze back to Bruce, he was suddenly still. “Say we do build another wormhole, find a way to power it with a thousand nuclear bombs without blowing ourselves up. You gonna chicken out?”

“What?”

“You gonna wring your hands with this, I don’t know; it could be dangerous pissing and moaning, or you gonna do what needs to be done?”

Bruce looked away. He didn’t want Tony to know he hadn’t even thought about it. “I won’t chicken out,” he said.

“Because I need to know.”

“I thought . . .” Bruce said, then started again. “We went over this yesterday.”

“Yeah, well. Yesterday didn’t happen. Frankly, I can never tell whether you’re gonna man up or act like chickenshit.”

“Man up,” Bruce murmured. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

Tony just kept staring at him with those dark, flat eyes. “What happened this morning?”

“What?”

“Freak out, panic attack, shake-out? You lose your marbles?”

“I was . . . um.” Bruce pressed his lips together, thought about it. “I don’t like waking up where I didn’t go to sleep.”

“Uh-huh. World without consequences. That make you flip?”

Bruce smiled, a little sourly. He should have known Tony would get right to the heart of it. “A little,” he said. “Yeah.”

“Good,” said Tony, “because it still matters. Everything we do matters.”

Tony was different than Steve. He didn’t believe that what they did mattered because he believed in an objective morality. He believed that what they did mattered because he still thought that he was going to be the one to fix things, even though everything they did today was going to get undone tomorrow. The problem was—if they didn’t fix it, Bruce wasn’t sure who else was going to.

The world was science fiction, now. He was science fiction too.

“Yes,” said Bruce, and there was a world of answers in that word.

They got to work.

*

They didn’t fix it. At least, not that day.

Pepper came from wherever she’d been with her mom, and several hours later, Natasha dropped off Jane. Then Natasha disappeared, and Pepper said she was going to try to deal with the havoc the repeating day was wreaking on Stark Industry stocks. Jane was online with Selvig a good part of the day, and Tony was more snippy than Bruce was used to seeing.

“You still wanna go out there,” Bruce said at one point, thumb moving over his fingers.

Tony held his gaze for a moment, then turned away. “Yes.”

It was hard and flat and clear—for once, without any adorning sarcasm or self-mockery.

Bruce glanced at one of Tony’s monitors. “You should turn off the news,” he said, trying to keep his voice gentle.

Channels kept coming in and out. Usually when it came to media, you could depend on at least someone being unaffected by any on event, leaving them able to report it, tape it, broadcast it, but everyone in the world was repeating July fourth. Among the rioting and looting, there was the core of news media, wondering what the point was. Tomorrow, would today’s news even have happened? Most of the world still didn’t know.

“I can’t,” said Tony, riveted to the news screen. “They don’t have a fucking clue what’s happening.”

Whoever said Tony Stark was in it for the glory was full of shit.

According to the news, the world was in mass chaos, and this was just the second day. What would happen tomorrow, when everyone realized that this was not a single do-over? What would happen when every last man, woman, and child realized that whatever they did, there would be no consequences to their actions, because whatever they did—it would be undone tomorrow? And the worst part was—did it even matter? If the whole world went crazy, did it matter if mankind ended in wholesale slaughter? If Earth went up in a blaze of glory and nuclear explosions?

Because tomorrow, it would just happen again.

Bruce tried not to think about it as he plugged Tony’s figures over and over again. If he thought about it, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Instead, he thought about aikido, and how after bowing, Natasha had taught him how to fall.

Tony didn’t turn the news off, but he did put on headphones. The panel was showing footage of the fire in California, an earthquake in the Philippines. It happened every day. Today.

The trouble with building an arc reactor the size of four football fields was one of time and materials. Theoretically, it was possible, but they only had one day. Tomorrow morning, everything they had done would be undone, and they would need to start again.

A regular nuclear power plant was usually built on a timeline of three to seven years, and even if they had been able to build it in a day, they couldn’t even assemble the materials in that amount of time. Just getting a hold of and transporting that much lead, coolant and gas would be near to impossible, and the largest known amount of vibranium was right there in Captain America’s shield. Tony said that while the reactor didn’t require vibranium—it could use palladium—the vibranium was what kept the reactor so efficient. Using palladium would require the reactor to be nearly three times as big—ten football stadiums.

According to Tony, it was possible to manufacture vibranium, but they just didn’t have enough time.

Three and one third football fields, the calculations said.

*

“What you’re saying is, it’s impossible,” Fury said. It was around eleven that evening, and Pepper had come back. Steve and Thor were still out on the streets.

“It is possible,” said Jane. “Theoretically.”

“Theoretically doesn’t help me,” said Fury. “You folks are thinking small. I need you to think big.”

“You don’t know anything about how we’re thinking.” Jane’s brows drew down. “If you’d ever asked me anything about my research, instead of stealing it or—”

“I’m sorry you’re upset,” said Fury, not looking sorry at all, “but right now, we’ve got a little bigger fish to fry.”

“You think we don’t know that?” There was something about Jane’s face that got less animated when she was angry—really angry, as she was now, instead of just kibitzing Tony. There was a stillness to it, narrow and sharp, that made her tiny frame still seem as though it could be lethal. “We know that. We’re doing the best we—”

“No.” Tony stopped pacing, not looking at anyone in particular. “We’re not.” He went back to tapping his stylus in his hand. His mouth was a hard, dissatisfied line. “There’s something we’re missing here.”

“There’s something I’m missing here,” said Pepper. Everyone turned to look at her. Confusion knit her brows. “Why can’t we build an arc reactor the size of four football fields in a day?”

“Three and a third football fields,” said Bruce.

Pepper looked around at all of them. “Excuse the layman’s terms, but do you need to wait for the glue to dry?”

“Because,” said Jane, and stopped. “Because the resources alone—”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. has resources,” said Fury.

“My guess is, Stark Industries does too,” said Bruce, glancing at Pepper, “but not at hand. It has to be in our hands; we can’t wait a day for a shipment of lead. We can’t even wait eight hours.”

“I can get you lead in three,” said Pepper.

Bruce glanced at Tony. He was still just tapping his stylus, staring at Pepper. “How much?” Bruce asked Pepper. “That’s the issue. The quantities we’re talking about—the vibranium alone is impossible.”

“Not impossible,” said Tony. “But you’re right; some of the other materials . . .” Baring his teeth, Tony looked away, and went back to tapping his stylus, faster than before.

“Write me a list,” said Pepper.

Bruce shook his head. “I admire the sentiment,” he said. “I really do, but it’s not just resources. It’s manpower.”

“Coordination,” said Jane. “You’d have to do it all at once. There are literally a zillion details—okay, not literally. A zillion’s not a number. Everything would have to be simultaneous, precise measurements, no mistakes.”

“I appreciate that,” said Pepper. “You’re talking about linear assembly versus synchronous.” Glancing at the screen, she saw Fury’s frown. He could be confused, or maybe that was just his face. Apparently Pepper decided it was confusion, because she went on, “If you make a cake, you usually do the steps one at a time. Sift the flour. Soften the butter. Beat the eggs. If you wanted to make it faster, you would need more people—one to sift the flour, another to soften the butter, and so on, so it can be done all at once.”

“If you have to wait three hours for it to bake when you’ve only got one,” Bruce said, “it doesn’t matter how many people you have.”

“It does matter,” said Pepper, “if you have the people and resources to design and build a different kind of oven for the task.”

“That oven might not exist,” said Bruce.

“Are you sure?” Pepper didn’t sound forceful or at all skeptical. She sounded sincere, the sort of sincere that made you truly want to think about your answer. “Baking is a chemical reaction. Aren’t you just forcing the molecules to do something? And can’t you catalyze a faster reaction, if you have enough of a necessary element? I am aware that building a reactor is not the same as baking,” she said, with an unassuming smile, “but fusion is just another chemical reaction.”

“I forget how you . . .” Looking at Pepper, Bruce gestured vaguely at Tony. “Must spend a lot of time with him.”

“Sometimes too much,” said Pepper, mouth turning down at the corner.

Jane tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “It’s a good idea,” she said, “but building that oven—setting up the catalyst for that reaction—that could take a day in itself.”

“I’ve never built an oven,” said Pepper. “But I could find you ten people with plans for how to build them, and get you twenty people who had the parts, and find fifty who could make them come together at the same time.”

“Fifty thousand,” said Tony. He stopped tapping.

“Yes,” said Pepper.

He turned to face her. “A hundred thousand.”

Pepper gave him a smile that looked almost timid. Bruce thought it was anything but. “I could try,” she said.

“I hate to be a downer,” said Jane, “but has anybody ever heard the phrase, ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’?”

Tony started tapping his stylus again.

“You’re not just not talking about a hundred thousand people,” Bruce said, agreeing with Jane. “You’re talking about a hundred thousand people putting on one helluva a show, without missing a line.”

“Yes,” said Pepper. “The recipe is the script—the blue-print for the reactor.”

“Rehearsals,” said Tony, and stopped tapping again.

Pepper nodded. “We'd need to practice. Over and over. The way you practice assembling a gun, until you can do it in under a minute."

For some reason, the way she said it made Bruce wonder what she knew about assembling guns.

Pepper went on, "The cooks are the cast. When the curtain goes up, they’ve got to move around each other perfectly in sync, so they can each do their part.”

“Pick whatever metaphor you want,” said Fury. “My question is—how many days until show time?”

Bruce shook his head. “Even if you get it perfect—”

“Two months,” said Pepper.

“No,” said Jane. “Bruce is right. Even if you get every line right on the day of the show—think about it. That’s sixty days of the same day. People will go crazy.”

“Some will,” said Tony.

“Not good enough,” said Fury.

“One month,” said Pepper.

“Miss Potts,” and there was a little bit of why are you even here? in Fury’s face. “You don’t think you’re being optimistic?”

Pepper just sat there, leaning back a little, legs crossed. She was in a suit for some reason—Bruce guessed going into the office today had been a plan of hers all along. Who knew—with Pepper Potts, maybe this had been a plan of hers all along. She looked as though she was negotiating a business deal.

She looked as though she was very, very used to it.

“Let’s just say I know a guy who knows a guy,” she said, eyes crinkled at the sides, a smile of dry amusement.

“You gonna keep everybody with you?” said Fury. “Thirty days of July fourths, every day people rioting in the streets, every day a war—every day someone else deciding it’s not worth it?”

“No,” said Pepper. “I’m not a theatrical director. If we’re going with this metaphor—I’ve been a stage manager most of my career.”

“Sometimes make-up,” Tony added quickly.

“Among other things,” Pepper said, only sparing him a glance.

Bruce looked over at Tony, who looked like he hadn’t taken his eyes off Pepper in quite some time and—yeah. Bruce sort of got it, why Tony was into Pepper, and it was probably why Bruce was so suspicious of her. Pepper made you believe her without you even realizing she was doing it.

I want to tell people what to do without them thinking I’m bossy, had been what she said she wanted when she was twelve. Bruce thought it fair to say she’d gotten her wish.

“Recently I’ve been moved up to producer,” Pepper went on, “but that doesn’t make me a director either. That just means that besides finding you the personnel and resources, I can also find you everyone necessary to make the whole thing go. I can find you a director.” Then she did look at Tony. “I wouldn’t have to go very far.”

Fury said, “You need someone who can convince however many men you have—ten thousand or a hundred—that they need to keep doing the same thing.” It was hard to tell whether his tone was skeptical. “Thirty days. Same damn rehearsal over and over, and when show time comes, and that one cue gets missed—they need to do the same damn thing over again, and better this time.”

“She doesn’t mean me,” Tony snapped.

“Some of us just have strengths in different fields,” said Fury. “I don’t think she meant me, either.”

Then, of course, Bruce knew exactly whom Pepper had meant.

Fury looked at Pepper. “I’m not so bad at acquiring resources either,” he said. “I’ll send Captain Rogers down your way.”

Chapter Text

On the third Fourth of July in a row, Steve Rogers almost died.

The night before, Steve and Thor had come in from the streets, and Pepper had explained her idea.

“Cake,” Thor had said.

“It’s a human invention,” said Tony.

“I know what theater is,” said Thor.

“We can drop the analogy,” said Pepper.

“No,” Steve had said. He’d smiled, but Bruce had thought he looked weary. The cowl was down and the gloves were off, but otherwise he was still in the Captain America uniform. “It’ll probably help people understand what we need from them.”

Bruce had been surprised. For some reason, he’d expected Steve to defer the responsibility, to say that Tony should be in charge, or even Fury. Maybe it was just because Steve had so much humility; Bruce hadn’t though Steve would agree that he was the only man for the job—but he had. Not with pride, not with arrogance, but with . . . resignation.

They had begun planning immediately. First, they were going to need to get their suppliers to agree to work with them—that was Pepper’s main job. Tony, Jane, and Bruce were still working on making the reactor a smaller, more manageable size, but they would also need to help Steve coordinate when and how everything should go together.

The repeating day ended at exactly 4:47 am, at which point it began again from 4:47 am that morning. There was no sudden jolt, no rush of time moving backwards. One moment Bruce was working with Tony and Jane in the lab; the next he was asleep in bed. The turn-back of the clock didn’t even wake him up; it wasn’t until Steve called that he even became aware of what was happening.

Bruce rolled over on the mattress, picked the phone off of the box, and said, “Hey Steve.”

“You okay?” Steve asked, over the sound of road noise.

Bruce felt as though he had just woken up from seven hours’ worth of sleep, even though he’d been working in the lab not twenty minutes ago. He guessed it was a good thing he’d gone to bed early July third. “Fine,” he said. “What about you?”

“Good,” said Steve. “Romanoff’s gonna pick you up.”

Because the other guy presented a risk, Bruce thought. He should resent it, but he didn’t. “She doesn’t need to,” he said, after another moment.

“She’s coming anyway,” Steve said. “The streets are crazy. It’d take us a year to get to the Tower at this rate.”

And maybe she wasn’t just worried about the other guy. Maybe she was just—looking out for him. He should be embarrassed about it, but he wasn’t. There was a blank spot, where a negative reaction should be. “What about you?” said Bruce.

“I’ll get there faster if I go now,” said Steve. “I’m not on your way.”

“Okay,” said Bruce.

Despite the impossibility of Pepper’s whole scheme, Bruce couldn’t help but feel imbued with a sense of purpose. He’d contributed to this mess—just as he’d feared, when Tony had asked him to stay in New York. He’d feared it when he’d come back, and he’d feared it when he’d found a twelve year old Tony in his lab that day two months ago.

Now that the repeating day was happening, however, there was nothing left to do but fix it. Honestly, it couldn’t get much worse than this, and for once—fixing it had nothing to do with the other guy. It was better to be helping than not doing anything at all.

Bruce got dressed and put on his shoes. Made coffee for Natasha, then went up to the roof. Waiting for her felt almost like hope.

*

Riding in the chopper was a lot less like hope. For one thing, Bruce just didn’t like helicopters. For another, Manhattan was on fire.

“Why is it on fire?” Bruce asked, turning to Natasha, who was manning the controls. “Natasha,” he said, when she didn’t answer. “Why is Manhattan burning?”

Natasha didn’t even look at him. “Nick,” she said, into her headset. For a full minute, she was quiet.

In the distance, several tall buildings were in flames. Bruce couldn’t see what was happening over there, because the chopper was going in the other direction. The smoke was roiling up over the Lower West Side. Right on Steve’s route to Stark Tower.

“Okay,” said Natasha, and pulled off her headset. She looked over at him then, lips pressed together. Like she was sizing him up.

“Just tell me,” he said.

Natasha faced forward, steered the chopper. “Someone cut a gas main.”

“And?”

“Someone cut several gas mains.” She glanced at him again. “The rioting is pretty bad. Yesterday was bad, but today—” She pursed her lips. “Yesterday, people could excuse as some kind of freak occurrence. Today, people are starting to think it’s going to keep on happening.”

“They’re afraid,” said Bruce. When Natasha didn’t say anything, he went on, “Terrified. Mass panic. Hysteria. Also the fact that when you wake up tomorrow, you never blew anything up at all.”

She looked over at him, those calculating eyes again. “Is that what’s going through your brain?” she asked.

Bruce was the first to look away. “Where’s Steve?”

“Might be late.”

“I asked you where he is.”

For another long moment she was silent. “He was going to Stark Tower. He got waylaid. Haven’t heard from him since.”

Pepper’s plan—this whole thing with the arc reactor—it was ridiculous. It wasn’t going to work. First of all, no matter how many people moved in sync, there were just parts of it that simply took too long to be finished in a day. There was no way to speed them up; some things had to be done linearly; time was actually a fact of reality—or at least biology. Preprophase had to occur before prophase which occurred before prometaphase which occurred before metaphase; that was why they had those names; they had to happen in that order.

And second of all, even if it did work, no one was going to buy it. Fury thought this could work because he came from the military; soldiers could do what they did because they believed: they believed in their country, their commander, their purpose. They were willing to sacrifice their lives because someone told them to turn right instead of left, and that was because things like nationalism and patriotism had been born out of a millennia of warfare.

Today, a surgeon could walk from his patient, and tomorrow, that patient would be no worse for it. Policemen could walk away from their posts, and tomorrow, the crimes that had been committed would be undone. There was no precedent for something like this, and so very little reason for people to believe in this cause. For people to buy into the idea that building a giant arc reactor could yank them across the plane of time would require a tour-de-force. Something powerful enough to bend the wills of men, something awe-inspiring enough to give faith when there was no reason.

Steve was just one man.

“Bruce,” Natasha said.

Bruce looked at her but couldn’t see her face, because how could they put that kind of faith in just one man, just one man who had lived one hundred days of this—one hundred and eight days of this; how could Steve survive it; how could he carry that weight how could he carry all of them—

“Hey,” said Natasha. “Look at me.”

He looked at her.

“You wanna touch down at the library?” she asked. “Get some books or something? Read the card catalogue?”

That was a joke. The first time they’d sparred, she’d called him a geek.

Actually, she’d told him Clint said he was a geek.

“I don’t think they have books about this,” Bruce said.

“We could check,” said Natasha. “If you’re going to get all worked up about it.”

“I’m not worked up.”

“You sure?”

“Maybe a little.”

Natasha glanced at him. “I guess someone who doesn’t get at least a little worked up over Steve Rogers isn’t really human.”

She was smiling a little—that smile she had with her mouth sort of bunched to one side. When he was twelve he’d thought it looked like a strawberry. He guessed he hadn’t been wrong about everything. “You don’t look worked up,” was all he said.

“That’s the first time someone’s ever called me human.”

“It was more like a suggestion.” Bruce glanced out the window again. He couldn’t see the fire any more, just the smoke. “I’m sure Clint calls you human.”

“No. He’s convinced I’m a robot. Ask him.”

“You’re not a robot, Natasha.”

“You’re very sweet.”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “That’s the first time someone’s ever called me sweet.”

“I doubt it.”

Bruce didn’t contradict her, because she was right. Lots of people seemed to think he was just this fantastic guy. Lots of people weren’t very bright. “Is Tony,” he started, and stopped. “Is someone looking for Steve?”

Natasha didn’t look over. When she spoke, she didn’t sound sympathetic or understanding, which Bruce really appreciated. “Stark and Thor are on it.”

“I guess a three days in a row brings all the Unabombers out of their shacks.”

“Shacks aren’t always made of wood,” was all Natasha said.

Often they were made of flesh.

*

When the skids of the helicopter finally landed on Stark Tower, Natasha turned to him. “There you go,” she said.

“What?” said Bruce, because this was the first time he realized she wasn’t coming with him.

“Don’t you have science or some shit to do?”

“Oh. Yeah.” His thumb moved over his fingers. “You’re gonna find Steve?”

She smiled a little in that crooked way of hers. “I’m going to save Stark’s ass, probably.”

Bruce lingered. “He’s in trouble?”

“You’re concerned about Stark?”

“What, I can’t be concerned? Is it because I turn into a raging behemoth, or some other reason?”

“We’ve got it, Bruce.” She was still smiling. “Go on. Do your thing.” She didn’t say his name at all the way she had when he had been twelve; there wasn’t even a trace of Russian.

“Be careful,” he told her, and opened the door.

“Don’t forget to wear your glasses when you do your science,” she called.

*

When Bruce took the elevator down to Tony’s apartment, he found Pepper. Tony must have brought her, when he’d heard about the riots.

She was standing in front of the bank of windows, against which were projected several images from different television stations. Her ankles were crossed, the point where they met and her neck the narrowest parts in the long, slender silhouette she made against the television panels. One arm was wrapped around her torso tightly, her other arm folded close so that her hand rested on the hollow of her throat. She stood very, very still, and didn’t so much as turn when Bruce came into the room.

Bruce looked from her back to the television. All of the images were news; one of the smaller images was something happening in Moscow. Another image was of rioting in Dayton. On another station was an image of some guy Bruce vaguely recognized from a movie. In the middle were burning buildings on the Lower West Side, where the camera occasionally cut to Iron Man, flying above a fire.

This was why, Bruce realized suddenly. For several months now, he’d been trying to figure out Pepper Potts’ agenda. She’d sent the email that had enticed him into coming back to New York City, and he hadn’t been able to figure out what she wanted from him. She’d offered him a job with Stark Industries, and he hadn’t been able to discern her ulterior motive. She’d kept trying to be his friend, and he’d felt like he was missing something.

This was what he was missing: seeing Pepper Potts, alone, twisted around herself—waiting for Tony Stark.

It was about love. It was as simple and uncomplicated as that.

Maybe Pepper did want Bruce as a friend. Maybe she wanted him to be Tony’s friend, too. Who knew, maybe she even respected him as a scientist, and thought he really could be of some help at Stark Industries. But aside from all that, above it all and more importantly—she wanted Tony to come home at the end of the day.

If it meant forging alliances, she would do that. If it meant building a team, she would do that too. If it meant rebuilding every bridge he’d ever burned, befriending every enemy he’d ever made, or putting the most dangerous weapons in existence into one room—she would do that too, if it meant Tony would not be fighting out there alone.

She could have started the Avengers Initiative herself. She probably would have, if Fury hadn’t done it.

“Go ahead,” said Pepper. They’d been standing there nearly ten minutes, Pepper just staring at the panels. She still hadn’t looked away. “Call me an idiot.”

“What?”

“Tell me that it’s foolish to worry,” she said. “Even if he . . . the day’ll reset tomorrow, and he’ll be fine.”

“It’s not foolish to worry,” Bruce said, trying to keep his voice very, very gentle.

“Yes, it is.”

Bruce couldn’t read any emotion in her face; it looked as blank as Natasha’s. Her eyes were usually so expressive. He’d never really seen her afraid, he realized. He’d seen her look at Tony and she’d been mocking, teasing, affectionate and concerned. For some reason, he hadn’t been able to see that that was love.

Maybe because it was Tony, and he was so—

so—

“He has a god,” said Pepper. “And Captain America.”

Bruce felt a flash of guilt, because this time—Tony didn’t have a Hulk. “Pepper,” Bruce said.

“I don’t care.”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers.

“I don’t care if he’s saving people,” Pepper said.

“Okay,” said Bruce. “I don’t actually believe that.”

“I know,” said Pepper. Her eyes were still glued to the broadcast images. “I hate them, sometimes. All of them. Everyone who's helpless.”

“Does that make it any easier?”

Her hand curled into a fist at her throat. “No.”

Bruce glanced at the images. “There isn’t much I could do out there, you know,” he said, thumb running over his fingers. “I mean, against aliens, maybe I could. ‘Mindless killing machines’ is a line they feed you so feel okay about swallowing, but it’s true they were trying to kill us, and if I work at it—I can sort of aim him. The other guy. But in that—” Bruce waved a vague hand at the broadcast—“that’s just a bunch of people. A wild sea of panic. I’d just make it . . . messier.”

Pepper crossed her arms, still looking at the screen. “He told me once he massacred them. All those aliens. Xenocide, he called it.”

Doesn’t even keep me up at night, Tony had said, and even then, Bruce had known it was a lie. “Tony Stark saved the world,” said Bruce, because he believed it. Even if it had been xenocide.

“I would have tried to stop him,” said Pepper.

“What?” Bruce was surprised. “You mean because—because the Chitauri were sentient?”

“I don’t care about the Chitauri. I couldn’t care less about the Chitauri. I care about him.” Finally, she turned to him. “Do you understand what I am saying? I would have rather sent the world to Hell, than have him risk his life.”

Pursing his lips, Bruce ran his thumb over his knuckles. “I get what you’re saying,” he said finally.

“Well? You don’t object?”

He didn’t tell her that Tony had asked him that same question. “I don’t blame you,” he said.

“Tony said you blame him. For the xenocide.”

Bruce shook his head. “I don’t. I told him I don’t.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Turning away, Pepper went over to the bar. Her heels clicked on the smooth stone floor, and she pulled a glass down from one of the shelves. “He blames himself. It kills him that you disapprove.”

“I don’t disapprove of Tony,” Bruce said. “I’m not in a position to disapprove of anyone.”

Pepper poured herself a glass of amber liquid, then knocked it back with the kind of grace that almost, for a moment, made Bruce think of Tony. Then she made a sour face, putting out her tongue and wincing, and he knew it wasn’t something she usually did.

“I don’t disapprove of Tony,” Bruce said again, moving closer.

“Well, anyway.” Pepper put the cut-glass stopper back in its decanter. “Tony thinks you do. He was a wreck after you left the first time.”

“It didn’t have anything to do with him,” Bruce said. His hands moving over each other, he came closer to the bar.

“You still don’t have it figured out.” Pepper turned to him, arms crossed, and he still couldn’t read the expression on her face. “Do you know the last time Tony knew a man as brilliant as you are? Who made him feel as judged as you do?”

Bruce shook his head. “I’m not—”

“There was only one,” she said, “and Steve just makes it that much worse. I’m sorry, I’m—” Turning away, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “I have a headache.” She took her hand away from her face, took a deep breath. “He makes me crazy, when he’s out like this. I say things I don’t mean.”

Lifting his brows, he said, “I think maybe you meant them.”

“No. I don’t.” She turned to him, her eyes big and sad. “Bruce, I like you. You don’t seem to believe that I like you, and I don’t know why. What do you think I’m going to do, bite you? When you were a little kid,” she said, and stopped.

Bruce looked at his shoes. “Yeah.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I was kind of a dick.”

“I was going to say—” She hesitated again. “I understood.” When he looked up, she rushed on, “I might not have had the same experiences as you, but I knew what it was like. How frustrating it was, not to fit in anywhere, not to be what you . . .” She shook her head. “Tony isn’t like that. He could make a place for himself anywhere.”

Bruce lifted his brows. “I meant I’ve been a dick at this age, too. I’m not . . .” He took his hands out of his pockets, smiling a little. “I’m not very good at trusting people. You’ve been really nice to me. I’m sorry.”

“Okay. I’m . . .” She swallowed, smiling as well. “I’m glad.”

“I actually didn’t really like crusts.”

She laughed a little, surprised. “What?”

“When I was a kid,” Bruce said, because she’d offered to cut the crusts of his sandwich when he’d been turned into a twelve-year-old, and he sort of hadn’t given her the time of day. “I’d just—never thought about cutting them off before, and my mom . . .” Bruce shrugged. “She made me eat them.”

“I lied,” said Pepper.

“Huh?”

“When I said that my mom cut them off.” Pepper shook her head. “My mom never once did anything like that for me.”

“There you go,” said Bruce.

Pepper gave him a half smile. “Would you like a scotch, Bruce?”

Bruce smiled back. “Better not.”

“In that case, distract me.” Off his look, she explained, “I’m not really cut out to be a lady in waiting. If we can’t save the world out there—let’s start doing it in here.”

“Alright,” said Bruce, and they got to work.

*

When Tony finally came back, he was carrying Steve, and Steve was bleeding.

Bruce was working on making the reactor even smaller (three and a quarter football fields) and Pepper was making phone calls when JARVIS notified them of Iron Man’s arrival. They went back up to the apartment as Tony walked in the sliding door.

“I can walk,” said Steve. He was wrapped in a blanket, covered in blood.

“What—” Bruce started to say.

“Clear the couch,” said Tony. His mask was down, but otherwise, he still wore the suit.

“I’ll get the first aid,” said Pepper.

“Really,” said Steve. “It’s not that bad.”

There was blood everywhere. You couldn’t see it on Iron Man’s red metal, but it was all over the floor—Jesus Christ, it was pouring on the floor, and Bruce had to tear his eyes away so he could get the back cushions off the couch.

Tony walked over to it, the armor strangely incongruous walking in an apartment on the carpet, and put Steve down. “Fix him,” Tony said, stepping back.

“Just give me half an hour,” Steve said.

It didn’t really occur to Bruce, though it usually did, that he wasn’t a medical doctor. On his knees beside the couch, he reached for the blanket, unable to see where the wound was.

“Don’t.” Steve caught his hand, grip slippery and weak. “It’ll be fine. Just give me a moment; I’ll—”

“Shut up,” said Tony.

Steve tried to tighten his hold, but there was so much blood, Steve’s hand slid on Bruce’s wrist. “Doctor Banner, I don’t want you to have to—”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Tony, stalking back over toward the door, where he could take the suit off.

“Here,” said Pepper, and put a first aid kit by Bruce’s knees. She opened it, putting anti-septic, tape and bandages on the coffee table. Obviously, she had done this before.

“Doctor Banner.” Steve coughed, and there was blood in that too, but he managed to tighten his hand on Bruce’s wrist that time. “Really,” he said. “I’m okay.”

So Bruce peeled back the blanket, and Steve abdomen looked like it had been hollowed out with a gigantic spoon. Bruce had cooked pumpkin before—not because he was really such an artisan chef but because that had been all there was. The worst part about the inside was all those stringy bits—what were they; just bits of goo, hanging from the cavity inside.

“Excuse me,” Pepper said politely, then scrambled off the floor.

She was going somewhere to retch, Bruce thought absently, holding the blanket down again to stop the bleeding. Tony was out of the armor now, coming back over near the couch.

“It looks way worse than it is,” said Steve. “Really, I just need to—”

“I’ll gag you.” Tony’s voice was low and soft. “So help me fucking God.”

Holding the blanket with one hand, Bruce fumbled to put his glasses on. “Can you hold this?” Tony came around the couch, pressed in on the blanket. “I’m going to feel his ribs. Just in case he’s—”

“Yeah,” Tony said quickly, his voice rough. His head was turned away from Steve’s face, eyes locked on Steve’ feet.

Steve’s abdomen was nothing like any kind of gourd; a pumpkin had just been Bruce’s first thought. Intestines were just coming out; that was all. The real worry was if something had been punctured, the most immediate concerns being the heart and lungs.

Standing, Bruce put his hands on either side of Steve’s pectoral muscles, over what remained of his uniform. “These will set?” Bruce asked, because he was already finding broken ribs.

Steve nodded, corners of his mouth turned down. He was obviously in a lot of pain, and he just as obviously didn’t want Bruce to see it. Dirt and blood was smeared across his face. “Half an hour,” he said. “An hour, tops.”

“Bullshit,” Tony muttered.

“Have they ever set wrong?” Bruce asked, moving his hands down to the next pair of ribs.

Steve hesitated.

“Three times,” said Tony.

“Yes,” said Steve.

“Four to six hours,” said Tony, “and it’s like veal goulash in here. You don’t line it up it’s gonna—”

“It’ll be fine tomorrow,” said Steve. “When the day—”

“Is someone talking?” Tony said. “Sounds like someone talking, but I can’t imagine why someone would, when I’ve told him fifty times to shut his goddamn fucking—” He cut himself off.

Bruce glanced down. Tony was staring down at his hands, still pressing down on the bloody blanket. “You can let go,” said Bruce, and replaced Tony’s bloody hands with his own.

Tony stalked over to the window, and stood there staring out of it.

Steve licked his lips as Bruce felt for Steve’s final set of ribs. Steve’s voice was low when he said, “He doesn’t like it when I—”

“Hold my hand,” Bruce said.

“Doctor Banner.” Steve made a feeble gesture, as though to push his guts back inside his body. “I can—”

“It’s not for you,” Bruce said, trying to keep his voice gentle. He showed Steve his hand.

It was shaking.

“Oh.” Steve licked his lips again. They were chapped, a fact which Bruce found almost as worrisome as everything else. Captain America didn’t get chapped lips. “Well, I suppose, Doctor Banner, if you need reassurance.” Steve tried to smirk, and slippery fingers closed around Bruce’s hand.

Bruce smiled, and held on. “Don’t be a jerk,” he said.

“’M not,” Steve said. “I’m a punk.”

Bruce squeezed his hand, then reached his other hand through the gaping wound across Steve’s belly. It slipped and slid until he found the bottom rib, which had broken almost clean through, and was currently in danger of puncturing Steve’s lung. Then Bruce pulled.

Steve made an inhuman sound, and tried to sit up.

“Shh,” Bruce told him, letting go of his hand. He pushed him back down easily. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I thought you were dead,” said Steve.

“Nope,” Bruce told him.

“You were,” said Steve. “I killed you. You fell off a train . . .”

“Tony,” Bruce said.

Tony turned on his heel to face him. “He’s delirious.”

Bruce said, “I need a—clip.”

“What?” Tony ripped his eyes off Steve’s face.

“Something to hold his rib in place, so it doesn’t heal crookedly. Tony,” Bruce said again, when Tony just stared at him.

Tony started moving.

Bruce held the rib in place with one hand, trying to gently push Steve’s guts back in with the other.

“Let me help,” Pepper said, and knelt beside him.

“You sure?” Bruce asked her.

“I’m fine,” said Pepper. “Momentary lapse.”

“Tell him I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I never meant to.”

Pepper glanced at him. “I have sedatives,” she said. “Should I—”

“Guess you’d better try,” said Bruce.

She left again, and Tony came back with a piece of metal, and Steve kept saying, “I’m sorry; I never should have; sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

The sedatives didn't seem to work, but sometimes Steve would close his eyes, breathing deeply. Bruce set his rib, then began the process of sewing him up. “You don’t have to stay,” Bruce told Pepper, because Tony was nowhere to be seen.

“He doesn’t want me,” Pepper said, as though reading Bruce’s thoughts. She was sitting on the coffee table, knees folded neatly and her shoes side by side, almost prim. She kept cutting floss for the stitches, precise little lengths meticulously snipped.

“Do we know what happened?” Bruce asked.

Pepper shook her head, and Bruce went back to sewing.

*

Once Bruce got Steve sewn up, he washed the wound and dressed it. Then he set about cutting off the rest of the uniform, which was maybe pretty much the last thing he had ever wanted to do in his life ever.

"Don't," said Steve.

"I have to," said Bruce. The stuff was tougher than it looked, too, like Kevlar.

"We don't," said Steve. "You never wanted to before."

"Don't talk," said Bruce. He wondered whether Natasha’s uniform was like this, then thought about how she and Steve had taught him water polo, then tried to think of nothing at all.

Steve blinked, then his hand reached out, stopping Bruce from cutting the uniform away from his hips. "Please." He looked at Pepper. "Miss Potts."

"Pepper, Steve," said Pepper. "You know it's Pepper."

"Yes, ma'am." Steve smiled a small, twisted smile. "Could you, um—"

"Anything you want," said Pepper, moving closer so she could touch his face.

It looked so intimate that Bruce looked away, and he realized that she meant it.

"Um," said Steve.

Bruce gripped the knife tightly. "He wants you to go away," he said.

"What?" Pepper turned back to him with a horrified look on her face. Then she followed Bruce's gaze to where he was cutting the uniform away. Her eyes widened, and then she looked annoyed. "Steve, you are—" She must have seen something in his face, because she stood up. "I'm coming back in five minutes," said Pepper. "I don't care how naked he is."

"I'm really sorry," Steve said, when she was gone.

"Shh." Bruce cut the uniform down along the hips, then took Steve's boots off, and got the rest of it off. There were other cuts and scratches, but Bruce could see that they were already healing. He almost felt like if he sat there and stared at them, he would see the skin knitting up.

"I miss you," said Steve, when Bruce covered his mid-section with a blanket.

"I'm right here," Bruce said, as he attended to some of the other cuts.

"I couldn't save you," said Steve. "It's my fault."

When Pepper came back, she brought an IV. "I thought he might not be able to eat or drink for a while," she said, because apparently Stark Tower just had these things sitting around, and Pepper apparently just knew how to use them. As she hooked it up, Steve closed his eyes again. His breathing was even, and his pulse wasn’t too bad, considering.

In fact, considering, his pulse was much better than it should have been. Bruce had never seen anything like it. After the battle with the Chitauri and the attack on the helicarrier earlier, Steve had seemed weary—maybe a little bruised—but otherwise fine. Everything Bruce had read about how Captain America had fared during WWII had made it seem like Steve got through the thing with nary a scratch. Bruce wondered whether that had just been propaganda, whether the truth could easily be hidden because Steve’s wounds healed so quickly, it looked as though he had never been wounded at all.

A year and a half ago, Bruce had gotten his first new scar in over eight years. He’d been peeling potatoes and the knife slipped; it was a little cut, but it hurt a lot, and Bruce had thought about the sound of air conditioners. He’d thought about snow. He’d thought about how he liked old movies, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, because you could tell when people were fighting in them that they weren’t actually getting hurt.

Bruce had bled and then he’d washed it. He’d put a bandage on it and celebrated that cut like he’d run a fucking marathon, like he’d won a fucking medal, when all he’d really gotten out of it was a tiny white scar—and his body. He’d gotten his body. Here it is, he’d been able to say to himself. He could cut it up, clean it up, starve it, slake it, mutilate it, it was his. No one could take it from him.

No one could take away his scars.

Once Steve was sleeping and they couldn't do anything more to help him, Bruce covered Steve up more thoroughly with the blanket and stood up. “Where is he?” Bruce asked Pepper.

She was looking down at Steve, eyes full of worry and concern. When she looked up at Bruce, her features smoothed a little. “In the shop,” she said. As Bruce headed toward the elevator to go down, she said, “Bruce.”

“Yeah?”

“Leave him.”

Bruce glanced at the elevator, then at Steve, then at her. “You don’t want to know how that happened?” he asked, jerking his head at Steve.

Pepper looked down at Steve, the concern and sadness visibly washing over her again. She’d said no one mattered as much as Tony, but the way she looked at Steve—it was not an act.

She has a good heart, Steve had said once. He’d been talking about Natasha.

Pepper ran her hand through Steve’s hair, gently enough so that he would not wake. Then she turned away and headed for the elevator, heels clacking on the floor again. “Let me do the talking,” she said, eyes fixed straight in front of her.

*

In the shop, Tony had taken one of the arc reactors out of an old suit and taken it apart. The small, delicate pieces were laid out around him and he was doing something with a blow torch. He wasn’t wearing protective gear, but when Bruce looked around he didn’t see any evidence of alcohol. Bruce released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

“Tony,” said Pepper.

Tony turned off the blowtorch. Picked up something else which turned out to be a tiny saw or drill that made a high, screeching sound.

“Tony,” Pepper said, and went closer.

“One hundred and eighty-seven thousand square feet,” Tony said.

“What happened to Steve?” said Pepper.

“Give or take a few thousand,” said Tony. He switched back to the blowtorch.

“Tony,” Pepper said steadily. “I just spent the last two and a half hours watching Bruce sew up Captain America,” said Pepper, “not to mention cleaning and bandaging and listening to him rave.”

Tony finally put the blowtorch down, and looked straight up at Bruce. “He raved?” he asked Pepper. “What’s he so upset about? He still tell you he turns into a monster? Because I’m beginning to think that’s a myth.”

“Bruce isn’t the one who ripped Captain America’s stomach open,” said Pepper, sounding frustrated. “And neither are you, though—”

“Me?”

“I might rip open yours if—”

“I never said I did. In fact—”

“—you don’t tell me how this happened.”

“Rip out mine?”

“Yes, rip out yours,” said Pepper.

“That’s a little extreme.” Tony turned on the blowtorch. “Isn’t it?” he asked, leaning over the workbench to melt something with the tiny flame.

“Yes, it is,” said Pepper. “It’s—”

“Explosion,” said Tony. “Piece of a building. You know how debris flies.” Pow, he mouthed silently.

“What?” Pepper sounded incredulous. “A piece of a building—”

“You’re saying a building did that to Steve?” Bruce asked, because Pepper had told him to let her talk, but her method of handling Tony seemed to be arguing with him, and maybe that wasn’t the best one.

“That’s what I’m saying.” Tony stopped blowtorching for a moment to look at Bruce—look all over him, no part untouched, then straight down into him. Then, as if finding nothing worthy of note, Tony turned back to the blowtorch. “Got any more questions?”

“He fought aliens,” Pepper said. “He fought aliens unscathed. He—”

“Yeah, well,” Tony said. “Humans are different. Particularly if you’re Captain America.”

It made sense, then. Steve was used to fighting wars: he could face an enemy down, no problem. But send him into a the midst of a riot of people acting violent because they were afraid and confused, he didn’t have an enemy. His mission was just to protect everyone, and with that lack of direction, Steve was that much more likely to get hurt.

“Where’s Thor?” Bruce asked.

“Ohio,” Tony said. He wasn’t even looking at Pepper, and she wasn’t touching him.

A cold feeling settled over Bruce’s shoulders. “Is Jane alri—”

“No,” said Tony.

“What—”

“Don’t ask so many questions, Bruce.”

“What happened to Jane?” Pepper said.

Turning off the blowtorch, Tony stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“If you tell me,” Pepper said, “we’ll leave you alone.”

For a moment, Tony just sat there. “Oh, Jane,” he said finally, and turned on the blowtorch. “You won’t be hearing from her today. Try tomorrow.”

Tony’s blowtorch made this low hissing sound, the release of gas concurrent with a soft hum of fire. Then he turned it off, and switched to the high drill again.

Pepper turned around. Her expression could only be described as bleak. “Come on,” she said, touching Bruce’s wrist.

“No.” Bruce shook her off, moving toward Tony. “What do—”

“Don’t,” said Pepper, and grabbed his arm.

Don’t touch me, Bruce wanted to say, and didn’t, because he’d said it when he was twelve. Instead, he turned to Pepper. “How could—”

“Get him out of here, Pepper.” Tony didn’t sound angry or upset. He didn’t sound much of anything. Bored, maybe, and how could—

“If you come with me,” Pepper said, “I won’t have to use force.”

Bruce looked at her blankly. That was a joke. Surely that was a joke. She was even smiling.

“Please, Bruce,” she said.

Bruce wondered—with her big eyes, her sad smile, her pretty hair—whether that was what she meant by force.

Tony was ignoring both of them, still bent over his work.

Shoving his fist in his pocket, Bruce turned away, and went with Pepper.

*

Pepper made Bruce explain to her everything that Thor had told them about being trapped in the plane of time. She’d gotten an explanation the day before, but she wanted to be sure she had it right, she said. She had to be able to persuade people they should invest time and resources in the giant arc reactor, when people were going to be panicking and looking for quick-fix solutions.

End of days, people were calling it, because of course, days as a plural was over. There was only one.

Once Jane had arrived the day before, she’d given Thor a piece of paper. He’d drawn a pretty, swirly tree with lots of curly-cues and squiggles. It hadn’t made much sense, but Jane had seemed to get something out of it. The drawing Bruce made for Pepper was much more simple: he just drew Pong.

Then Pepper asked him to show her the plans for the large arc reactor, going over materials for it, and how much they would need. While they could write a list, it would not exist the next day. Pepper would have to commit it to memory.

“Not memory,” said Pepper. “Delegation of it. Different people will be responsible for different things. Once we get each of our suppliers on board, they’ll know how much we need, and they’ll come with it.”

“You still need someone to hold it all in their head,” Bruce pointed out. “Make sure it all comes together smoothly.”

Pepper looked at him. He was seated behind the desk, and she was leaning over, her hair hanging down on either side of her face. If he moved, he could brush it with his shoulder or his face.

Bruce was very careful not to move.

“You’d be surprised at what I can hold in my head,” was all Pepper said.

Bruce thought maybe he wouldn’t be.

They got to work—Pepper making more phone calls, Bruce still trying to reduce the size of the reactor. He was concentrating hard enough that he wasn’t really listening to the calls Pepper was making, but he could still hear her voice. There was something sweet about it. Nice.

She wanted to be friends with him because she wanted him to protect Tony. And maybe she also liked him, but at least wanting to protect Tony, Bruce could understand. He could understand it almost even more than he understood Fury. Bruce had never saved the world—but once, he’d been in love.

Every once in a while Pepper checked in with him—just for general information, rather than numbers or specifics. Bruce thought she did it more just to check his state of mind than because she didn’t know what she was doing.

After a little while had passed, Bruce got JARVIS to call Jane, but there was no reply. This was one of those times when a ROMANOV would have come in handy, but if it was a device Tony was just prototyping, he hadn’t had a chance to get it on all of them yet. If and when he got finished with them, Bruce would have to make sure Tony got one on Jane, and it occurred to him that this was an invasion of privacy.

It didn’t occur on him to care.

“I’m going to go check on Steve,” Bruce said.

*

Upstairs, Steve had taken off his IV, and was staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Sorry,” Bruce said. “I didn’t think you’d be awake.”

“That’s okay, Doctor Banner,” Steve said. “I’m . . .” He trailed off, licking his lips. “Not a big sleeper.”

“Let me check these,” Bruce said, putting his glasses and kneeling beside the couch, so he could get to Steve’s bandages.

“I’m alright.”

“Sure,” said Bruce. “Just lemme see.” He tried to pull down the blanket.

“Really, Doctor Banner.” Steve clung to the blanket. “I’m okay. It heals quickly.”

Letting go of the blanket, Bruce looked at Steve’s face in surprise.

“Mister Stark was just making a big deal,” said Steve. “I’ve had worse. By tomorrow I’ll be—I mean, even if the day wasn’t—”

“Steve,” Bruce started, and had to stop. “Steve,” he said again, “are you actually—” Bruce just really couldn’t believe it. “Are you embarrassed?”

“I.” Steve got a little pink. “No.”

Bruce had to swallow a smile, because Steve had pretty much been eviscerated and something horrible had happened to Jane, but, “You’re afraid I might see your bare chest?”

“No.” Steve frowned. “It’s just—someone took my uniform, and I’m not wearing anything underneath.”

“I took off your uniform, Steve.”

“Oh.”

Bruce tugged the blanket.

“It’s just that I know you don’t like to,” Steve said.

Bruce’s hand froze on the bandages, because for just one crazy moment he thought Steve was saying I know you don’t like to undress me, and Bruce was thinking, when would I have gotten the opportunity, and then he started thinking about what Steve had said he had done during those repeating days, because—

Some things I’m not proud of.

Bruce’s hand startled away, guiltily, and Steve clarified, “I know you don’t like to touch me.”

Calmly, Bruce reached over and started peeling back the tape for the bandages. “I never said that,” he said, because he hadn’t.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Steve said quickly.

“Maybe you did,” said Bruce, and got the bandage off. The stitches looked great. Fantastic—as though it had been ten hours instead of one and a half. “This is great,” said Bruce. “How’s the pain?”

“Fine.”

“Would you say anything if it wasn’t?”

Steve smiled—just one side of his mouth, affectionate and kind. “I wouldn’t lie to my doctor.”

“I’m not your doctor,” said Bruce. “And yes, you would. I’m going to put some antibiotic cream on this.”

“You don’t have to,” said Steve. “I don’t get infections.”

“Allow an old fuddy-duddy this idiosyncrasy.” Bruce picked up the antibiotic cream.

“At least let me do it,” said Steve, but Bruce just put some on his fingers, and gently began application.

“You’d just smear it all over and call it good,” Bruce said, by way of explanation.

For a long moment, Steve didn’t say anything. The wound was hot, next to the stitches, but not too hot. The whole thing wasn’t even anywhere near as red as it should be, which might have caused Bruce alarm, except that it wasn’t pale either. Steve’s skin was just this perfect, cream color that kept on going and going and going, underneath the golden hair of his chest—underneath the blanket covering his waist, his hips, his legs.

“You’re not an old fuddy-duddy,” Steve said, as Bruce put on the cream.

“Tell that to my gray hairs.”

“You don’t have that many. And I’m older than you. By a long shot.”

“When your back hurts every morning, then we’ll talk.”

Steve looked at him in concern. “Your back hurts every morning?”

“Only sometimes.”

“Maybe you should stop sleeping on the floor, Doctor Banner.”

“I don’t sleep on the floor.”

“Yes, you do.”

Bruce wiped his hands, then got a new bandage and began to tape it over the stitches. “I find it creepy that you know how I sleep. Besides, lately I’ve been waking up on a mattress.”

“That’s on the floor.”

“It’s also disturbing that you know the situation of my bedroom.”

“You have a horrible bed-side manner,” said Steve. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Yes,” said Bruce. “Natasha. I do have an excellent floor-side manner,” he added.

“I know.”

Bruce got another piece of tape for the bandage. “I didn’t say I didn’t like to touch you.”

“I meant—”

“I said that I don’t like to be touched.” Bruce smoothed the bandage down. “It doesn’t have anything to do with my father.”

“Excuse me, Doctor Banner, but I doubt you have any way of knowing that.”

Bruce, Bruce almost said, and didn’t. Steve was looking at him with such kindness, warmth, such true affection that Bruce looked away, and started shoving things back into Pepper’s first aid kit.

“I really do feel a lot better,” said Steve, changing the subject because he was friendly and from the 1940s. “I think—”

“No.” Bruce’s eyes shot up to find Steve trying to sit up. He put a hand square in the middle of Steve’s chest. “No way.”

“But I—”

“I’ll hold you down if I have to,” said Bruce, and Steve just looked at him.

Steve looked at him and looked at him and looked at him, and Bruce couldn’t think of anything, anything at all. The silence grew so long and loud that Bruce wanted to take his hand away, but then he thought about Steve trying to sit up. He really shouldn’t sit up, and Bruce thought he saw something—just a flash of something—something in Steve’s eyes, just a little something, something like—

Hunger.

Bruce took his hand away and put the cap back on the cream and the cream inside the first aid kit.

“Sorry,” said Steve. “I’ve never really been a good patient.”

Taking off his glasses, Bruce moved away. “I doubt you’ve been a patient much.”

“I was,” said Steve. “All the time, before the serum, obviously. I was horrible.”

“Well, you have such a malicious personality, that’s easy to imagine.”

Steve didn’t smile. Instead, he picked at the blanket pooled around his waist. I know you don’t like to touch me Steve had said, and there had been no accusation there, no bitterness or hurt feeling, but finally—once he was safe and some distance from him—Bruce could put the pieces of the puzzle together. Steve had said it that way because he wanted to be touched.

Of course he did. Steve was a tactile person, a social, extroverted person, and he had no one at all to touch him, no one he could touch. Who were his friends—Clint and Natasha, who were impenetrable; Tony, who was capricious, and Bruce Banner, who was weak. Now that Bruce thought about it, he guessed that Pepper was the only one who touched Steve, and in the end that was just another reason Bruce should be ashamed of not liking her much in the beginning.

“Did I say anything weird?”

Bruce glanced at Steve, whose blue eyes managed to look penetrating and guileless at the same time. “What?” Bruce asked.

Steve looked back down at the blanket. “I think I was delirious, earlier,” he said. “I kept thinking—I’m just, sorry if it was weird.”

“You weren’t weird, Steve.”

Steve kept picking at the blanket. “I can’t just lie here, Doctor Banner. I’ll go crazy.”

“I could get you a book.” During one of their sparring sessions, Natasha had accused Bruce of being from the nineteenth century. She seemed to think paper books were hilarious, so he added, “Or a tablet.”

Steve thought about it. “Could you get me a pencil and a pen, and some paper?”

“Sure,” said Bruce. He got the drawing stuff, and brought it back to Steve. “Do you know what happened to Jane?”

Steve was situating the paper on the hard surface Bruce had got him. “What?”

Bruce told Steve what Tony had said. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but later when he thought about it, he’d guessed Steve would look surprised or sad or shocked, but he didn’t look any of those things. He just got this shut-down, frozen look, like nothing could touch him, and it sent a little chill down Bruce’s spine. “You haven’t talked to Thor?” Steve said, when Bruce was done.

Bruce shook his head.

“JARVIS,” said Steve. “Get me Special Agent Maria Hill.”

“Yes, Captain Rogers,” said JARVIS. A window panel within their field of view darkened, and after several moments, revealed the interior of the helicarrier, and a woman’s back.

“This better be good, Stark,” said Agent Hill, as she turned around. Then she processed what must have been the image on her monitor, and said, “Oh. Captain Rogers.” Bruce hadn’t seen much of Agent Hill, but he’d sort of thought of her as this typical military kind of persona—an implacable expression, phased by nothing—except now she looked a little flustered. “What can I—we do for you?”

“Hello, Maria,” said Steve.

Bruce glanced at him in surprise, because from what he gathered, Steve only used people’s first names when they asked him to.

“We’re trying to figure out what happened to Jane Foster,” said Steve.

Agent Hill looked surprised, then her features softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Stark should have told you. The agent who retrieved her encountered some—difficulties after the extraction.”

“What kind of difficulties?” Bruce asked.

“The jet was shot down.”

Steve frowned. “Who has the capability to shoot down a jet?” he said. “And why would they?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. has plenty of enemies,” said Agent Hill, “as does the military. At this point, we have no knowledge of whether it was a terrorist attack, or just some crazy who’s been stockpiling weapons. It could be someone involved in the current crisis.”

Bruce was incredulous. “You really think someone on Earth caused the loop?”

“We’re examining all possibilities.” Agent Hill was back to being expressionless.

“Thanks, Maria,” said Steve.

Agent Hill’s eyes flicked over him. “Director Fury wants to know how you’re doing.”

“Does he?” Steve smiled; Hill’s cheeks went pink, and Bruce wondered whether Steve even knew that he was flirting.

“He’ll appreciate a status update,” said Hill, voice flat.

Steve glanced at Bruce. “Doctor Banner says I’m not allowed to get up.”

Agent Hill’s mouth tightened, but otherwise, she didn’t react. “Director Fury will call between three and four.”

Steve smiled wryly. “Then I probably should go back to sleep.”

Agent Hill hesitated. She actually hesitated, and Bruce realized that he had been wrong before.

Maria Hill looked like she would be fine with touching Steve as well.

“Get better,” was all she said. Then she touched a panel in front of her, and the screen went blank.

“I guess I’m tired after all,” said Steve.

Bruce took away the drawing things, and for nearly an hour, watched Steve sleep.

*

Around four hours later, Steve was doing even better. He still had mending ribs, a horrible gash across the belly, and thirty-one stitches, but Bruce let him sit up, and he seemed fine with eating. He was around where a normal patient would be after three or four days of recovery, but personally Bruce thought that Steve was too optimistic. For today, anyway. Tomorrow, of course, he would be fine, because today would not have happened yet.

When Fury called, Tony, Pepper, and Bruce all assembled with Steve in the living room of Tony’s apartment. Steve sat propped against a bunch of pillows, but he hadn’t been moved from the couch. He’d pulled the blanket up to his armpits.

“The press conference is at nine eastern standard,” Nick Fury called at five to tell them. “You gonna be on your feet by then, Captain Rogers?” he said, face filling the screen.

“You’re shitting me,” Tony said.

“Yes, sir,” Steve told the screen.

“Excuse me, Nick.” Tony grimaced. “This guy had a hole in him the size of—”

“From the looks of it, Doctor Banner stitched him up,” Fury said, voice as flat as ever.

“He really shouldn’t be moving around,” Bruce said.

“Oh, you’re an expert on the super soldier serum?” Fury’s good eyebrow went high, and it was a low blow.

Bruce’s hand moved over his thumb. “No, I—”

Steve started to say, “I can—”

Tony whirled on him. “I thought I told you—”

“Jane Foster is dead,” said Fury. “From what you’re saying, she’ll die again tomorrow unless you do something about it.”

Bruce glanced at Tony, expecting him to protest, but he was strangely quiet. Pepper’s eyes were fixed on him, warm with worry, but she was on the other side of the room. Bruce still hadn’t seen her touch him, not even once.

“Now,” Fury said, because apparently, he had the floor, “what we have here is widespread panic. The people need to know what is going on, and they need to have some hope it’s gonna get fixed. There’s still gonna be chaos, but maybe enough people can keep their heads to do the job.”

Bruce looked around. Tony was just staring at some point on the wall, grinding his teeth, and Steve was looking at his hands. Pepper was looking around as well, but her gaze dropped as soon as she met his. “Look,” Bruce started to say.

“Agent Romanoff’s going to be there around eight to escort you,” Fury said. He was talking to Steve, but it sure got Bruce’s attention.

“Is she—”

“Agent Romanoff is fine, Doctor Banner,” Fury said. “You can rest assured with the knowledge she’s doing everything in her power to put a stop to this.”

It was low, so very low, so transparently manipulative that Bruce glanced at Tony again, waiting for him to say something. But Tony didn’t; his mind seemed like it was elsewhere, and it struck Bruce suddenly that Fury had something on Tony. He had something; some kind of dirt, information, some kind of hold—or maybe it was just, deep down, that Fury and Tony were the same.

Bruce didn’t like to think so. As dangerous as Tony was, he never, ever would have overseen weapons development with the Tesseract.

Scratch that. He might have, before he became Iron Man. But Bruce had done all kinds of things before becoming Hulk, not the least had been work on gamma bombs, so he didn’t exactly hold Tony’s former work against him, and Tony wasn’t like Fury. He wasn’t.

“If this is gonna work at all,” Fury said, “you need to get people behind it.” He was looking at Steve again. “A repeat of today—this day—can’t happen again. You gotta get people to believe that sticking to their guns is worth it, and Stark—you and Doctor Banner have got to work with Foster to make sure it can happen.”

Steve glanced at Tony. “Stark should give the press conference,” he told Fury.

“No,” Fury said. “It has to be you.”

Steve shook his head. “I’m never very good at talking.”

“Miss Potts and I will work on what you say,” said Fury.

Right, of course, because Fury was the one who was going to manipulate the public, and Steve was just going to be his mouthpiece. Fury was already manipulating people, because Tony was still just standing there, and for the first time, Bruce wondered what Fury had said, after the Hulk fell from the helicarrier.

Tony and Steve had repaired the helicarrier once Hawkeye’s arrow hit; Bruce knew about that. He’d always just reckoned Tony and Steve had figured out where Loki was and thought they’d had to stop him; after all, Bruce had decided the same thing. But Fury had been there, and his agenda had been clear—sic the “Avengers” on the evil god and space aliens, and when Bruce thought about it: Fury’s plan had worked beautifully. All of Fury’s plans had worked beautifully, except for maybe Phase Two—and who was to say that had failed, anyway?

Pepper, of course, had known the plan all along, whether she had cooked it up with Fury, or completely independently. That was what she had been doing earlier today, Bruce realized—her phone calls, her soft voice, her requests for general explanations. She hadn’t just been looking for a way to explain the giant arc reactor to suppliers. She’d been looking for a way to word it all to the press and public.

“They need to hear it from you loud and clear, Captain Rogers,” Fury was saying. “They need to believe tomorrow is worth fighting for. They need to come together. Unite. Fight.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve Rogers said.

*

Tony grimaced and left the room, and Fury began working out plans with Pepper.

Bruce went after Tony. From what Pepper had said and how she’d acted, Tony probably didn’t want to be bothered right now, but Bruce reminded himself Pepper still couldn’t be trusted, even if she meant well. “He’s using us,” Bruce said, grabbing Tony’s arm in the hallway.

Tony showed his teeth. “So?”

“I just mean—”

“You heard him,” Tony said.

“Yes, but—”

“Oh.” Tony’s face went blank. Instinctively, Bruce knew that was worse than the sneer. “You’ve got another way to do it then? Do tell.”

Bruce opened his mouth.

“Really, I’m all ears,” Tony said, before Bruce could say anything.

Bruce shut his mouth.

Just that morning, Bruce had had the same thought as Fury: it was the buy-in that was so important; people had to believe that this could work. The problem was, it just wasn’t right to lay it all on Steve—not just because Bruce had been looking at Steve’s intestines this morning. And not just because this was the one hundred and seventh time Steve had lived this day. It was because this was too much for any one man, and if Steve broke—it wasn’t just that the world would lose its savior. Bruce would lose his only friend.

God, he was a selfish bastard—except this time, he wasn’t. He wasn’t; it wasn’t fair to Steve; it wasn’t just; it—

“Steve wants to give a press conference with his guts all over the floor, he can,” Tony said. “No complaints from me. In fact, I’ll help him do it. Fury’s right. People’ll probably take it even better if Cap bleeds all over them.”

“It’s not your fault,” was all that Bruce could think to say.

Tony scoffed. “Of course it’s not my fault. Why would it be my fault?”

“Because.” Bruce finally let go of Tony’s arm. “You’re going to let him do it. You’re not going to stop it.”

“Sure. Why not. Know something, Bruce? Cap tells America to hold its dick, you know what America says?”

America doesn’t have a dick, Bruce sort of wanted to say, but of course, that wasn’t true.

“How hard,” said Tony. “You think we’re being fucked with, you just wait.”

Bruce swallowed. “Steve’s not—”

“You think so? There’s a reason they call him captain. You think that he can’t lead an army?”

“Steve doesn’t have an army.”

“He knows how to raise one. What do you think he’s been doing with you—making friends?”

Bruce could feel the blood leave his face, could feel his hand actually trembling. He put it in his pocket.

“God, please,” Tony said, making a disgusted face. “Not the kicked puppy face. Anything but that. Cheer up. We’re building the biggest weapon of mass destruction the world has ever seen, then everything will be back to normal.”

Bruce felt frozen. He finally understood why Pepper wasn’t touching Tony. “An arc reactor isn’t a weapon of mass destruction,” he said.

“Isn’t it?” Tony said, and walked away.

*

When Natasha came, she brought another Captain America uniform. At least this one was whole, but it wasn’t clean. There was blood and dirt all over it.

“Can’t he wear real clothes?” Bruce asked.

“Fury says this,” Natasha said.

“So Fury decides what Steve wears now?”

“Fury decides what I wear,” Natasha said, without expression. “Is it a problem?”

She was in her uniform, and it wasn’t the first time Bruce had noticed how tight it was. It wasn’t even the first time he’d thought maybe there was a problem with that; it was just the first time he’d gotten an opportunity to say anything about it. “Don’t you ever . . .” He swallowed, looked away, because he really, really liked her and didn’t want to jeopardize one of the only relationships he had that really mattered to him.

“Don’t I ever what?” she’d said, her expression still flat.

He’d looked back at her. “Get tired of being used?”

Her brow lifted. “Who do you think is using me?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Bruce said. “Director Fury. You take orders, and you—”

“Let’s clear this up right now,” said Natasha. “S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t using me. I’m using S.H.I.E.L.D. Any other questions?”

“Why is it dirty?” Bruce said. “Steve’s change of clothes. Why couldn’t you bring him a clean one?”

She shrugged. “Maybe there weren’t any.”

Bruce knew that that wasn’t true. They uniform she had brought for Steve to wear was bloody because Tony was right: people would respond better with Captain America bleeding all over them, just as they would respond better than if Steve had just worn plain clothes. People loved sacrifice, just like they loved Jesus.

Nick Fury knew exactly what he was doing.

*

“Hey, Rogers,” said Natasha, when Bruce brought her into Tony’s apartment. Pepper was still speech-writing with Fury, and Bruce didn’t know where Tony was. Natasha dumped the uniform on the table.

“Hi, Agent Romanoff,” said Steve.

“You look like shit,” said Natasha.

Steve was propped up on a bunch of pillows, but he hadn’t been moved from Tony’s couch. He just smiled. “Thanks.”

“Can I?” she asked, reaching toward the bandage.

“Sure.”

Natasha pulled it back. “Banner does good work,” she said, looking at the stitches.

“He’s a little fussy,” said Steve.

“The word you’re looking for is bitchy,” said Natasha.

“No.” Steve smiled. “I don’t think that word is in my vocabulary.”

“It should be.” Natasha laid the bandage back over Steve’s abdomen. “Did he do that thing where he pretends like he doesn’t like taking care of people?”

“Yeah,” said Steve.

“Never gets old,” said Natasha.

“I’m standing right here,” said Bruce.

“Also, he wore glasses,” said Steve. “I know how you like that.”

When Bruce had been twelve, Bruce and Steve had teased him. A lot. He’d pretended like he’d hated it, but secretly he’d loved it.

He’d assumed they were doing it because he was twelve.

“Sorry I missed it,” Natasha said. “You’re not going to get dressed yourself.”

“I can,” said Steve.

“Wow,” said Natasha. “You’re really dumb.”

“Honestly, I’m fine.”

“You’ve got two choices, Cap,” said Natasha. “Lay around like a wilting maid or pick which one of us you want to help you, and you should be grateful I’m giving you that much. I usually just shove Clint into his pants whether he’s ready or not.”

There was a little silence.

“That sounds different in Russian,” Natasha said.

“Doctor Banner,” said Steve. “Can I get help?”

“Uh.” Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “I’ll get Tony.”

“Please don’t,” said Steve, and it was the please that was a killer.

“Right. I’ll go find a wheelchair,” said Natasha, and she turned and left.

Bruce watched her go, maybe thinking of fleeing too. “Maybe Pepper,” he began, swinging back toward Steve.

Steve went pink. “I feel like I’ve adjusted fairly well to the twenty-first century, but the thought of a lady dressing me is . . . quite frankly mortifying.” He smiled a little. “Particularly when it’s someone else’s girl.”

Bruce wondered whether that meant because it was Pepper, or because she was Tony’s girl.

Bruce started helping Steve. Whenever Steve winced Steve said he was sorry, like he was hurting Bruce or something. Bruce thought about the way Steve had kept saying sorry when he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness.

He wondered if Steve was sorry because of the things that Tony said.

“I can do it,” Steve said, once the uniform was around his ankles.

“Don’t be stupid,” Bruce told him, because Steve was winded just from that. Bruce wondered whether he seriously planned on standing through the whole press conference. He stood there so Steve could steady himself as he pulled on the pants, and really, Bruce would have rather been anywhere else. Tony could have done this—he wasn’t easily embarrassed, but no one was talking to Tony, and Bruce wouldn’t have wanted Tony to dress him either. Innuendos would have never ended, so Bruce stood there and politely looked away, and didn’t think about Data or lions or water or back pockets or aikido or anything at all.

“Thank you for helping me,” said Steve.

Bruce looked at the various uniform things on the bed. “I don’t even remember how all these things go on.”

“I can do it,” Steve said.

Bruce was really tempted to just let him, but Steve winced as he reached toward the red thing on the table. “Stop it,” Bruce said, and pulled on his arm.

Looking guilty, Steve stopped reaching. “I just—”

“Steve,” Bruce said. “I’m a doctor. Let me help you.” Bruce got the red thing. It was red and white Kevlar, with a zipper—oh yeah. Around the middle. He helped wrap it around Steve, and let Steve zip it.

“That’s the first time I ever heard you use it,” Steve said.

“What?” Bruce said, looking at the other stuff Natasha had put on the table. There was another shirt thing; he remembered how it went on. When he turned back, Steve was smiling a little.

“’Trust me, I’m a doctor.’”

“Oh,” said Bruce. He held the shirt thing for Steve to get the sleeves through, and unfocused his eyes so he wouldn’t see Steve’s freckles. There were a lot of them. Freckles. Really light ones. “Well, you shouldn’t really trust me,” he said.

“I know.” Steve got the shirt thing on and fastened it in the front. “For one thing, you’re not a medical doctor.”

Bruce picked the belt up off the table. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“I know,” Steve said again.

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “Fury’s using you, you know.”

Steve took the belt, put it on. Bruce let him. “I knew they were going to use me when I took the serum,” Steve said, when the belt was finally fastened. “I didn’t take it for myself, Doctor Banner.”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. Steve’s bloody boots were on the floor, the cowl still on the table. “I know. I just—” He didn’t know what he just. He couldn’t finish.

“You’re the one who reminded me about this part of it,” Steve said, sitting on the edge of the sofa.

“Which part?” Belatedly, Bruce knelt to help Steve with the boots, because Steve was already hurting himself reaching for them.

“The part where I can’t just be a soldier.”

“What?” Bruce said, because he didn’t remember telling Steve he should be a soldier in the first place.

“’Tell a story’,” Steve said. “’And tell it well’.”

And it was true; Bruce had told him that. I’m not good at selling myself, Steve had said.

You don’t have to, Bruce had said. You just have to be who you are.

Bruce had known it at the time. Apparently, Fury knew it too.

“Jane Foster is dead,” said Steve.

“She’ll be alive tomorrow,” Bruce said.

“She still died.” Steve pulled on his boot. “If I can help even a little—” He picked up the cowl—“Then I have to. Also, you shouldn’t listen to Stark,” he added suddenly. “When he gets upset, he says things he doesn’t mean.”

“How did you—”

“On the days when he was in good spirits,” Steve said, putting on the cowl, “you were too. On the days I did something wrong and got him in a bad mood, you always looked like someone was punching you in the stomach. Repeatedly.”

Bruce swallowed. “I’m not—”

Steve just smiled. “I know,” he said, and Bruce didn’t know what Steve knew, because Bruce didn’t even know what he’d been going to say. “JARVIS,” said Steve. “Tell Natasha we’re ready,” he said, and walked across the room. He wavered the whole way, but didn’t fall.

“I’d say you clean up real nice,” Natasha said, when she got up there with the wheelchair, “but you know.”

Captain America still looked like shit.

“I know,” said Steve. “Let’s do it.”

*

Captain America stood upright for the whole press conference, and didn’t flag until the very end.

He stood in front of the mic, in red, white, and blue, cowl down, skin clear under seventy thousand watts of artificial light. “My fellow,” he began, but did not say Americans. “Citizens of Earth,” he said, and a hundred cameras flashed.

Bruce made JARVIS flip through all the news stations. Pepper had gone with Natasha and Steve to go over notes on the way, and Tony was nowhere to be found. At first, only the big American networks were carrying Captain America’s address. Eventually, though, it was everywhere, and people in other countries were furiously translating.

Pepper had made at least two hundred phone calls that day.

Steve explained that the god Thor had said that they had been pulled through time and could be pulled back again. He let them know that the genius billionaire hero Tony Stark had invented a machine to do so. He described to them Pepper’s plan, telling them that if they came together, each of them offering their ideas, resources and labor, they could save the entire Earth.

He didn’t mention Bruce’s name, and Bruce knew exactly why. He assumed Pepper had left him out of the script. He wondered whether Steve had fought that at all.

Steve warned them that the path would not be easy. They would have to repeat day after day after day and never see the fruits of their labor, because it would be undone tomorrow. But if they persevered—if they truly believed that their efforts were worthwhile—if they put faith in each other, in their will to succeed, in the strength and intelligence of man—then they could pull it off.

Scientists would need to put their minds to the problem, he said. Industrialists would need to be willing to donate supplies. Workers would need to donate their manpower, working with a team to build their individual part of the reactor in a given amount of time so that it could be slotted into place at the correct time.

The public would need to be patient, Steve said, because no one could jeopardize the plan. No one could decide that this wouldn’t work, that this wasn’t worth it; no one could sabotage any part of the project, because there were ten thousand different pieces, and each piece was important. No matter how hopeless anyone felt, beginning the day again without any noticeable result, they would have to forge forward, believing that today, they could make a difference.

“I was born at the end of World War I,” said Steve. “I lived long enough to see the world torn apart again, and then—sorry, folks. Guess I fell asleep.

“When I woke up, people asked me—didn’t the world used to be better? I think, maybe, people find the present disappointing. I can see why. I’ve learned about . . . so many things that happened. Vietnam, holocausts in Africa, civil wars in Europe. An endless siege in the Middle East. There have been lies in North America, the cycles of regimes in South America. Maybe you’re thinking—shouldn’t we have more to show for it?

“But I look around me and—folks, I am not disappointed. You shouldn’t be disappointed in yourselves. I look around and I see i-phones and Obama. I see the Arab Spring, and Korean pop. I see the International Space Station and the euro; I see anime and Bollywood. You know what I see? What I fought for, all those years ago. What we were all fighting for, no matter what side we were on.

“If you could go back and ask those people—mothers, fathers, mentors, teachers—they would tell you, they fought for you. They fought for the future. They fought for today.

“I still love my country,” said Steve, “but I love my planet more. I wouldn’t trade today for any other day. The people I knew then—I miss them, but I feel sorry for them too. They never got to see this. They never got to see what China has become, what Mexico will be. They never got to see Twitter and electric cars—but you will. My best friend never lived to see it—but you can.

“Some nice folks wrote me this great speech about how if we come together, we can effect great change. Reckon that’s true, but I wanted to say . . . there may still be troubles in the world, but you’ve already come together. You’ve already made great change. We didn’t get to where we are by just letting time run out; we got here by fighting for tomorrow. Every day, I’m living in that tomorrow.

It’s better than any of our wildest dreams.”

Another hundred cameras flashed, and a roar went up among the press. Steve wavered where he stood, stumbled, almost fell. Then Pepper was there, and she caught him.

Any other man, Bruce would have believed it was staged. If he’d listened to Tony, he’d have to assume it was. But Bruce had been right about Steve Rogers: he didn’t need to tell the story well; he just needed to be himself. Steve truly believed in all those things; there was nothing he had said that he did not mean.

He believed in fighting for the future; he believed that tomorrow, the world could be a better place. The fact that he could make others believe it too was the absolute best thing about Steve Rogers.

A whole new sense of foreboding settled around Bruce’s shoulders.

Chapter Text

On the fourth Fourth of July in a row, things finally started to settle into a sort of routine.

Natasha picked Bruce up in the helicopter, while Special Agent Hill rendezvoused with Steve. Natasha was in charge of Steve and Pepper’s security while they oversaw the necessary prep for the building of the reactor, and Special Agent Hill was acting as one of their personal body guards.

“What’s Fury doing?” Bruce asked, once they were in the helicopter on the fourth Fourth of July.

Natasha didn’t look at him. “Other things.” Her voice was what he imagined her spy voice must be like—blank, uninflected.

Bruce glanced out the window. Manhattan wasn’t burning this time. In fact, it almost looked—normal. “You don’t have to pick me up every day, you know,” he said, because it sounded like she had other things to do and she was taking time out just to do this. “I could find another way to—”

“No.” Keeping her eyes on the skyline, she tipped the controls down.

He watched her a little while. “I shouldn’t have said what I did,” he said. “Yesterday. I was frustrated. I’m sorry.”

She glanced at him, pressed her lips together, and turned back to look straight ahead. “You were hunted by the military for nearly a decade,” she said. “I work in espionage for an undisclosed international agency. If you weren’t suspicious of me from time to time, I—wouldn’t understand you.”

“I’m not.” Natasha didn’t respond, just kept piloting the helicopter. It was loud, so Bruce raised his voice. “I’m not suspicious of you, Natasha.”

“Maybe you should be,” she said.

“No.” Bruce was so startled he laughed, entirely without mirth. “Not when you’ve worked so hard to make me trust you. You don’t get to do that.”

She was silent for a moment. Then: “We never talked about Honduras.”

Bruce looked down. Sometimes he day-dreamed about stepping off high buildings, just because the slam of impact would be so comforting. It was what happened after that he didn’t really enjoy. When he glanced back at Natasha, her expression was inscrutable. “Do we need to talk about Honduras?”

Expertly, she steered the helicopter southwest.

“Natasha,” he said, voice straining over the whipping air.

“You’re right,” she said finally. “I don’t have to pick you up. I told Fury I was going to.” A line appeared between her brows. “He let me.”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “You think he has an ulterior motive?”

“Could be he thinks it’s safer.” Natasha glanced at him again, mouth tight. “I was sent to Honduras to bring you back for S.H.I.E.L.D. You know I didn’t try.”

“You’re saying Fury didn’t really expect you to. And if he didn’t . . . why did he let you go?”

For a while, Natasha just steered, staring at the skyline. “What I said yesterday was true. I use S.H.I.E.L.D. But sometimes I use him by letting him use me, and—it gets complicated.”

She didn’t know what Fury was getting out of it, in other words. Natasha was right: how Bruce had managed to get mixed up in an international organization founded on espionage and intrigue was totally beyond him.

“Thor’s in Dayton,” Natasha said, after a while of flying. “He went there when the day repeated, instead of coming back to the Tower. There’s an agent in Cleveland—he and Thor will get Jane to Manhattan by ten.”

“Okay,” said Bruce. “I’m really glad she’s not dead today.”

Natasha glanced at him again. “You knew she wouldn’t be.”

“Yeah. I just . . .” He looked down at his hands. His thumb was moving over his fingers. “I didn’t like thinking about the world without her in it.” Realizing what he’d said, he hastily looked up.

Natasha smiled at him, the really cute one, with the little dimple on the side.

Just as hastily, Bruce looked away.

“Uh, where’s Clint?” he asked.

Natasha lifted a brow. “Probably walking tightropes somewhere.”

“Steve says we played water polo,” Bruce said, because that meant Clint started the day somewhere close enough to reach New York in a reasonable amount of time.

“With Barton?” Natasha aimed the control down. “I shudder at the thought.”

“You don’t look like you’re shuddering.”

“I do it on the inside.”

“Why does it make you shudder?”

“Barton likes Speedos. He wears them whenever possible.”

Bruce didn’t really have anything to say to that.

“But that’s only if he can’t do it in the nude,” Natasha added.

“I guess he and the other guy have something in common,” Bruce said.

“Yes.” Natasha pressed a switch on the helicopter. “Although Barton did mention to me he thinks Stark should engineer special stretchy pants for you to wear. He thinks they should be purple. Clint adores purple. And turtles. He likes turtles also.”

“Um.” Bruce glanced out the window again. “Somehow I don’t think Tony’s going to be up for that.”

“Of course not,” said Natasha, and pressed another switch. “Stark adores nudity.”

Do you? Bruce wanted to ask, and didn’t.

“I can’t promise that I will never use you, Bruce.” The comment was entirely unexpected, and Natasha wasn’t looking at him. “I can’t promise that I will never lie to you.”

Bruce already knew that she was willing to lie. She’d done it so easily when he was a little kid. He’d been stupidly grateful to her for it, when he got turned back into an adult. Natasha had only ever made one promise to him. It was why she was here.

“I can’t promise not to hurt you,” Bruce said. He would have given everything he’d ever had to be able to make that promise to her.

“I know,” was all Natasha said.

*

For those first several repeating days, Natasha took Bruce to Stark Tower, where Bruce and Tony were still working on the arc reactor’s design. By the time she dropped him off, Stark Tower was always surrounded by press. Bruce wasn’t sure why they were there. Reporting the news just seemed so useless—newspapers especially were rendered pointless. By the time they were formatted and printed, there was barely time to read them before the day began again, and everything that had been written disappeared.

There would never be accounts written from these days to be salvaged for the ages. There would never be artifacts from these weeks. If they finally moved beyond this day, the world would still look as though today had only happened once.

Maybe this was what things had been like before television, before the printing press. The internet—ephemeral as everything that appeared on it was—was the closest you could get to ancient times, when the only reliable source was real experience and memory.

And yet, there were cameras, three big network trucks, microphones and swarms of people all around Stark Tower—even two other helicopters. It was as though, come heaven or hell, there would still be news anchors to report it. It seemed proof that most people didn’t know anything to do but go forward and get on with it, and that—that was uplifting, was what it was.

Bruce had expected chaos and despair, because he’d forgotten to take the vitality of the human spirit into account. He’d forgotten how people could rally to each other, how they could fight, how they could want change enough to bring it about. Human beings had this ridiculous capacity to care about the things they did and believe in them, even when what they did made no difference whatsoever.

When Bruce had first turned himself into the Hulk, he’d spent years beating his brains against a wall to try and fix it. He’d spent even longer running from it, because if he couldn’t cure it, then maybe he could crush it, hide it, stop it. It’d taken him nine years to see that if you couldn’t kill yourself, you might as well live.

Other people, Bruce supposed, took about three days.

*

Every morning, Tony set up a web site describing various design aspects of the arc reactor that could be optimized for efficiency, which processes could stand streamlining, and some of the goals and problems they were having. Crowd sourcing, however, wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

The press had put the word out about the web site, but both Tony and Steve had decided it wasn’t a good idea to share the design for the arc reactor with the world. People like Stane and Hammer had proven such energy sources could be used for ill purposes. Tony had written components into the submission form that would automatically throw away most submissions that were completely crack-pot or had nothing to do with the current design. JARVIS could weed out a lot of the dreck, but even engineers from reputable sources such as NASA and CERN weren’t necessarily on the same page, or scaling their suggestions to what Tony had already developed.

Part of the problem was that the submissions could not be saved for perusal tomorrow. If their team didn’t get to some of the valid suggestions, they would disappear, and whoever had sent it would need to send it again tomorrow for assessment. Fury had delegated S.H.I.E.L.D. specialists, but even they weren’t really going to have time to sort through everything every day, so Bruce put out some feelers on the forums he used to frequent under his old ID.

“What, like Mister Blue?” Tony asked that first day, as Bruce posted to a couple forums.

Bruce pressed his lips together, and kept typing. He could feel Tony staring at him.

“Who else do you know?” Tony asked.

“I’ve met some people over the years,” Bruce said, still typing. “I’m not thinking of anyone specific. Just, if they know someone, they can help.”

“You know people who know people. That it?”

“Yes, Tony. That’s it.”

Finally, Tony looked away to scribble something on a tablet. He was still scribbling things when he said, “I know people. Jane Foster. Erik Selvig. You.”

“I’m sure you know more people than that.”

“Nope. Knew this guy name Yinsen once. He kicked it. Oh! There was this guy. Big grimy Russian. Ivan someone-or-other.” It was impossible that Tony didn’t remember Vanko’s name, but Bruce had noticed that the more important something was, the more flippant Tony got. “Sort of a freak,” Tony went on. “I think he had some mental—” Tony frittered a hand—“issues. He kicked it too. Fancy that.”

Bruce clicked over to another site. “You have an entire R&D department.”

“They’re not you.”

“It might surprise you to know that I am not actually an engineer.”

“I do know that. It does surprise me.”

Bruce shook his head, still typing. “If I worked at it really hard, I could probably come up with some theories for how you could produce clean energy. But if you asked me to actually build an arc reactor, I’d be clueless before I looked at your designs. We need—”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Tony said.

“Well, not clueless,” Bruce ceded. “But I—”

“Bruce. You built a moly cow. In a shack. In a rainforest in Brazil, from scratch.”

Bruce shook his head again. “Not from scratch. I had—”

“So you didn’t forge the sword. You still pulled it from the stone.”

“I don’t really do swords. I’m not being modest here,” Bruce said, finally turning around. “I’m saying that this—” he waved a vague hand—“reactor wouldn’t be what I did even if I usually worked on nuclear power sources, which by the way, I don’t, and frankly some of the gross mechanics of this are out of my depth.”

“If I dropped you from the helicarrier in the middle of the Pacific without a paddle, you wouldn’t be out of your depth. I bet with nothing but a goddamn shoe-string you could probably find a way to walk—” Clamping his mouth shut, Tony looked down at his tablet.

Walk on water, he had been going to say. Apparently Tony was practicing restraint, seeing as how the fact that they could possibly become gods—having what they now had, knowing what they now knew—was the reason Bruce hadn’t wanted anything to do with the Flux Accelerator in the first place.

I pull more punches with you than I do with anyone, Tony had said, and Jesus, it certainly didn’t feel that way. Being around Tony made Bruce feel like someone was delicately carving him, leaving just enough of him to stand without pieces falling off.

But Tony was trying. “Thanks,” Bruce finally said.

“You know what you need to do?” Tony said, scribbling on the tablet again. “Get your hands dirty. Build things. Your version of fun is staring at numbers and symbols all day, and that never made a lick of difference to anyone.”

“You do know that you’re saying the entire field of philosophy is pointless.”

“Are you going to start talking about Kant, now? Because if you are, you’re pretty much every guy I ever hated in college. Make that every guy I ever hated everywhere.”

“I do think Kant made a difference. So did Hume.”

“You know who made a much bigger difference to everyone in the world than Socrates? Eli Whitney. People like us need to create. What’s the point of having the skills that we have, if we’re not going to use them?”

“I’m not a creator, Tony.”

Finally, Tony stopped scribbling. It made his stillness hopelessly dramatic. “You could be,” Tony said.

Bruce didn’t feel the need to point out that he had created something, once, and the only thing it could do was destroy.

“Best and greatest thing you can do,” Tony said, in that quick, decisive voice. Bruce knew that tone: he used that tone to convince people, and he only bothered to try to convince anyone of anything when he deeply believed in something. “We are biologically engineered to create.”

Bruce also didn’t feel the need to point out that he wasn’t going to give into his biological needs, either, and that children were so far out of the question that he really, really didn’t like to think about it. “I’m just trying to fix this,” was all he said, turning back to the computer.

“Uh-huh. Fix it up and go home. That the plan?”

Bruce swallowed a sigh. “I don’t have a plan, Tony.”

“Maybe you should.” Turning back to his tablet, Tony went back to sketching.

Finished typing, Bruce stood, planning to go over to the holodesk to look over the geometry for the wormhole again. Maybe there was something there they could change to better use the energy from the—

“Captain Spangled had a point, you know.” Tony put his tablet down, stood up. Took two swaggering steps toward him. “Fight for tomorrow. Cheesy speech, but here’s the dewy truth about Captain America: he believes everything he says.”

Bruce’s teeth grated. “I thought that he was just manipulating me.”

“Yeah. About that.” Tony grimaced. “I don’t say I’m sorry.”

Bruce started to move away. “You don’t have—”

“I’m sorry,” Tony said quickly, and that stopped Bruce in his tracks. “Steve would never—” Tony’s expression twisted again. “He’s not using you,” he said at last. “He’s not built that way. He’s—Jane was dead, and I was—”

“You really don’t have to explain yourself,” Bruce said. “I get it.”

Tony’s eyes searched his face. “I don’t like it when people I know die,” he said at last. “Really cramps my style.”

Bruce swallowed a smile. “I can see how it would be hard for you.”

“Do you?” Then Tony moved closer. “Did you ever try it again?”

“What?” said Bruce, and really wanted to back up.

“Dying.” Tony’s eyes were still and dark, and Bruce kept thinking about the space between the stars. “Did you ever—oh, you know. Throw yourself off a building, jump off a bridge, arsenic, shotgun, asp, car in the garage, noose—”

Bruce really didn’t like how many ways to die Tony could list of the top of his tongue. “Yes,” said Bruce, on top of Tony suggesting, “slit your wrists.”

Tony stopped. “Mm-hm,” he said, after a moment of silence. “Which ones?”

“I . . . ”

“Which ones did you try, Bruce?”

Honestly, Bruce didn’t understand why they were having this conversation.

“Don’t be shy.” Tony moved a little closer, and his voice could only be described as sultry. “Go on. Tell me.”

“It was—I—hypothermia,” Bruce said at last.

Tony blinked. “Right. Slow. Steady. I get that.”

Do you, Bruce wanted to ask; did Tony really get that, because if he did this conversation was starting to make a little more sense and if that was the case it was really, really scary, and—

“Do you think it’s worth it to use Cap’s shield?”

“What?”

“Drop in the bucket compared to the virbanium we need,” Tony said, shrugging, “but you know what they say. Every little bit helps.”

“Yeah.”

Tony raised a brow. “Yeah?”

“I mean,” said Bruce. “It probably will.”

“Cool,” said Tony. “Wanna help me make a new one when we’re done with this?”

“A new shield?”

“Yeah.”

Bruce actually didn’t want to, at all, because Captain America’s shield could be called a shield all anybody wanted, but it was really just another kind of sword. But Tony just kept looking at him, so he said, “Okay.”

“Yeah.” Tony licked his lips. “How ‘bout we get rid of that shitty tin coating.”

“It’s coated in tin?”

“Haven’t you looked at it?”

“Um.” Bruce scratched the back of his neck.

Tony rolled his eyes. “’Course you haven’t. My God, you’re such a prude.” Going back over to the lab bench, he picked up his tablet. “I bet Howard just did it for effect. People claim he wasn’t flashy, but seriously. I think he just wanted to hear the sound of the other guy’s defeat.”

If the shield was solid vibranium, the bullets hitting it wouldn’t have made any sound at all.

Sitting down, Tony started scribbling on the tablet again. “I think I’ll make it red and gold,” he said thoughtfully.

*

After the day that Jane died, Thor always went directly from Asgard to Ohio at the beginning of the time loop. An agent from S.H.I.E.L.D. and Thor escorted Jane to Stark Tower. The first day, when Thor arrived with Jane, Bruce said, “I’m glad you’re alive.” He shook her hand, because he didn’t know what else to do.

“Death wasn’t really that interesting,” Jane said, and kept shaking his hand. “I mean, you always wonder. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Am I going to an alternate universe? Will I find out the meaning of life? You don’t. You just die.”

That actually established nothing about the afterlife, in point of fact.

“See you managed to survive today,” Tony said, walking by, just as if he hadn’t been tearing himself apart over it yesterday. “Good work. Pocky?” he asked, waving the bag of green-covered sticks at Jane.

“No,” she said, but she finally stopped shaking Bruce’s hand.

“So, there wasn’t anything?” Tony asked, munching on a stick.

“You don’t have to answer questions about it,” Thor said. He was standing a little behind Jane, hands locked in front of himself. If Bruce had to say, he would guess that Thor was hovering.

Jane probably guessed the same, because she looked a little annoyed. “Apparently, resurrection on Asgard isn’t pleasant,” she told Bruce.

Thor scowled. “It is death that is unpleasant.”

“Well, it wasn’t.” Jane’s voice was tight, and she didn’t look at him.

Bruce thought it must have been at least a little unpleasant.

There was a tense silence, and then Tony said, “Pocky?”

“What?” Thor said gruffly, turning to him.

“Green tea flavored.” Tony handed him the bag without looking at him, then went back over to his tablet. “Let’s get to work, shall we? Jane, you didn’t help anything by being dead. We’ve only got it down to two and seven eighths football fields.”

*

Bruce, Tony, and Jane spent most of the initial days in Tony’s labs. Jane spent a lot of that time online with Selvig, trying to come up with ways to make the Flux Accelerator maximize the output it was going to get from the reactor. Bruce and Tony were still trying to make the reactor itself a more manageable size, while at the same time working out the vibranium problem and designing new equipment that would help the reactor get built faster.

Meanwhile, Thor protected Stark Tower, and went where needed to help Steve and Pepper in emergencies. The Tower wasn’t under attack per se, but after the riots on the third day, they weren’t taking any chances. Since the press conference, Stark Tower had become the center of attention. Everyone’s hopes were focused on the Avengers, and the building was always surrounded by press.

At around four that afternoon Thor escorted someone into the building. She was young and chestnut-haired, and for the first five minutes, she just kept hugging Jane and saying, “Oh my God. You died. Holy fuck! You died!”

Once Bruce figured out who the girl must be, he kept thinking about how Jane felt like an alien and Darcy Lewis must reinforce that opinion, except Darcy kept saying, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” She was very nearly hysterical, which somehow made Bruce feel fundamentally incapable of disliking her.

Tony gave Darcy one of his unnerving, assessing looks, then told her not to touch any of his equipment. “Well, I wasn’t going to,” Darcy said, in a moody sort of way. Tony turned around, apparently forgetting she existed.

He wasn’t going to offer her Pocky, anyway.

“This is Bruce Banner,” Jane said.

“Yeah, hi,” Darcy said.

“Hi,” Bruce said. Darcy didn’t have Jane’s awkward hand shaking thing because apparently she didn’t shake hands when she met people. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said, because it was polite, but Darcy just kept frowning after Tony.

“What’s his deal?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane. “He’s an engineer.”

“Oh my God,” said Darcy, turning back to Jane. “You died!” Then she smacked Jane on the arm. “Don’t do that!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” said Jane.

“But you died. Holy fuck.”

“Maybe you should try being in a jet when it’s hit by a rocket launcher.”

“I know exactly what I was going to wear to your funeral, too.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, it’s your fault for going and dying.”

“They do this,” Thor said.

Bruce glanced up. Thor was watching Darcy as she tried to decide between hugging or hitting Jane. Jane was rolling her eyes, but she looked happier than she had earlier. “What?” said Bruce.

“They bicker.” Thor looked down at him. “I have been trying to decipher what it means.”

Bruce raised his brows. “You don’t bicker with your best friends?” he said, even though he never had. He didn’t really bicker with Steve, anyway. He hadn’t really with Betty, either.

“Endlessly,” Thor said.

Bruce glanced at Darcy and Jane again. Jane was trying to tell Darcy she had work to do, and Darcy was trotting along behind her—sort of just like a puppy. She wasn’t really the kind of person Bruce had imagined.

“Most of all with my brother,” Thor said.

Bruce looked back up at him quickly.

Thor returned his gaze, and his eyes were the most alien part about him. “I thought that it meant affection,” Thor said.

Then he left, and Bruce wondered if it was even possible for two species to form a relationship when relationships among just one were so confusing.

*

Darcy stayed over by Jane’s computer for several hours. She was talking, but Bruce couldn’t hear what she was saying. Sometimes Jane looked like she was listening, but half the time it looked like she ignored her. Darcy didn’t really seem to distinguish, but sometimes Jane laughed, and what she’d said about her laugh was true: it was really awkward and lasted too long. Bruce liked it, but when he looked, Darcy didn’t seem to mind it either. She just smirked a lot and looked self-satisfied.

Bruce had long since stopped registering the fact that they were even there when the lab filled with sudden loud, crooning music.

“Sorry, sorry!” Darcy called, frantically swiping the touch keyboard beside Jane’s.

Jane was hissing something at her, while Darcy kept on moving her fingers over the keyboard.

Tony grimaced. “JARVIS.”

“Yes, Mister Stark?”

“Turn this shit off.”

“Yes, Mister Stark.”

“Whoa,” said Darcy, stringing the word out. “You’ve got like, Jude Law up in here.”

Tony rolled his eyes, and Jane seemed to be trying to convince Darcy to shut up. Bruce looked back at the equations in front of him. They were all working on separate issues—Jane was working with Selvig to make sure the Flux Accelerator was optimizing the energy output; Tony was trying to maximize the effect of Thor’s hammer, and Bruce was working on the vibranium problem.

“Saving the world with science isn’t the fun times they show on TV.”

“What?” Bruce turned, blinking behind his glasses.

“Seriously, on TV, science blows shit up.” Darcy had plopped into a chair beside him. “So, you’re Bruce Banner.” She spun in her chair, picked up the tablet on the table, put it down again. “You turn into that big green thing.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Bruce said, and turned back to the screen.

“What’s that like?”

Tony had used heavy ions to induce a reaction that would synthesize a heavier element when a complex of nucleons collided with the target nucleus, but the problem was that the new compound nucleus was relatively weak.

“I mean, totally lose control, like you’re a great big monster?” said Darcy. “That’s whacked out. Is it a Jekyll and Hyde thing, or is it more like a demon possession?

The new compound nucleus was relatively weak, meaning that fusion with even light ions—like helium six or carbon twelve—

Darcy let out a loud breath. “Okay, yeah, right,” she said. “Don’t want to talk about it; I get it, but Jane’s totally in her special place, which frankly makes me uncomfortable, and Tony Stark—he freaks me out. Doesn’t he freak you out?”

“No,” said Bruce. Fusion with light ions would lead to heating of the compound nuclei. If they tried heavier ions—

“He has freaky eyes. Cold, dead eyes. Don’t you think he has cold, dead eyes?”

“No,” said Bruce. If they tried heavier ions, they would need even higher energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier of the reaction, which would make the compound nucleus—

“So I guess it’s the end of the world,” said Darcy.

The compound nucleus would get hotter and hotter, meaning that to cool down it would emit neutrons and—his favorite—gamma rays. The would only happen in one case in a hundred, but increasing the excitation energy—

“Like that’s anything new,” Darcy went on. “Hello, Earth, apocalypse was so yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. Hey.”

Increasing the excitation energy would also decrease the—

“So you got shrunk into a little kid,” said Darcy.

It would decrease the stabilizing effect of the nuclear shells.

“Bruce?”

“Yes,” said Bruce. “I shrank into a little kid.”

“What was that like?”

“Smaller.” The nucleus would be unstable.

“It must have sucked,” said Darcy. “I mean when I was in middle school—I had this sweater. And kids would ask me, ‘Why’d you wear that sweater?’ And I was always thinking, ‘Why are they always asking me about this sweater? It’s just a sweater.’ It wasn’t until high school that I realized they were trying to tell me my sweater was dumb. Like it was hideous. A horrible travesty of a sweater. It took me a while to catch on.”

Bruce looked at his calculations again. In order to cool down the nucleus, four or five neutrons would have to be evaporated, making fission almost inevitable. In effect, increasing the excitation energy of the nucleus would ensure its destruction.

“So, you have to stay calm, huh?” Darcy said. “Can’t get angry, or you’ll let out your inner ape-man?”

Increasing the excitation energy of the nucleus would ensure its destruction.

“How’s that working for you?” Darcy picked up the tablet again. “Staying calm?”

Increasing the excitation energy would ensure its destruction.

Darcy put the tablet back again. “Soooooooo,” she said, and waited.

Fission was inevitable.

“You’re just annoyed at everyone all the time,” Darcy said. “Is that it? I mean, sure. If you never engage with anyone, then you never get upset. Makes sense.”

Bruce swallowed. “I’m not annoyed.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I’m . . .” Bruce fiddled with his stylus. “Working.”

“You one of those types who can’t work and talk?”

Actually, he was one of those types. It just usually wasn’t a problem, because he could tune out pretty much anything around him, and he always worked alone these days anyway. Tony could be a real motor-mouth when he thought no one was saying anything worth listening to, but could also go dead silent at the drop of a hat, and stay that way for hours on end. And Bruce hadn’t minded Jane, because but she’d been talking about quantum mechanics and lion sex.

“So.” Darcy was looking at him. She had very mobile features, but right now none of them were moving. She was just staring. Then she said, “No personal questions. Got it.”

And that, of course, was the real problem. Around Natasha, who must carry at least three concealed weapons at all times, he’d grown fairly comfortable. Pepper he found vaguely threatening because she asked normal questions like, how are you? and what do you need?

“I’m sure your sweater wasn’t ugly,” Bruce said, because he was an asshole, but he didn’t like to be.

Her brows rose a little above her glasses, and her mouth was totally unamused. “That was not the point of that story. But hey, kudos for trying.”

Bruce turned back to the screen.

“So, Jane and Thor,” Darcy said, sitting back and pulling the tablet toward her again. “I guess since it’s doomsday or whatever, they’re a thing.”

“Jane and Thor?”

“Yeah, you know. She’s like, five-three, brunette, total nerd, and he’s like, nine feet tall, Viking, and totally—made flesh.”

“Made flesh?”

“Like Jesus. Except he doesn’t turn into a wafer you can eat.” She brushed her fingers over the tablet. “Even if you sort of wish he did.”

“Thor isn’t nine feet tall,” was all that Bruce could think to say to that.

Poking something on the tablet, she went on, “Do you think there are barbells in Asgard? Seriously, what’s a guy like that do all day? Lift sheep?”

Bruce swallowed a smile.

she’s hot

Bruce’s head jerked up. Jane was at the other end of the lab, working near the Flux Accelerator. Tony was over near the holodesk, pulling apart images. He didn’t even look over.

Bruce looked back at his screen. The message was in a window that had just appeared there; it wasn’t any kind of messaging software that Bruce recognized, and there was no attached screen name. Not that he needed one to know whose message it was. Bruce tried to close the window, and found that he couldn’t. It was like a pop-up from hell.

“Jane’s gonna go for him,” Darcy went on. “I know her.”

she’s got a big pair of

“She has such awful taste in the menfolk,” Darcy said.

eyes

The message boxes kept popping up, a whole series of them. “Awful?” Bruce asked.

“I mean, he’s a god,” said Darcy.

and a delicious set of

“We got attacked by like, this giant metal monster,” Darcy said. “And then we thought Thor died. And then Jane died. It’s just not good karma, you know?”

lips

“You think a relationship is determined by karma?” Bruce said, trying to find a new way to kill the pop-ups. Jesus, for one thing, this was really inappropriate when the entire world was in chaos and they were supposed to be fixing it.

“I don’t know,” said Darcy, “but she has this problem. I mean, she goes for jocks.”

oh, and did I mention she has two magnificent

“Jocks aren’t by necessity bad people.” Bruce started pulling up JARVIS’s code, because for another thing, Darcy Lewis was really young. Like practically half his age.

“But it’s like, opposites attract, right? But with Jane, it’s really really opposites.”

hips

oh right and her tits aren’t bad either

“Sometimes people complement each other,” Bruce said, and to top it off this was objectification, so Bruce looked at the code and found, to his surprise, that it was in a programming language he recognized. The time stamp—predictably, Bruce realized, in a depressed sort of way—indicated that the program had been written all of ten minutes ago. Bruce didn’t really need to wonder what sort of person whipped up a quick and dirty software just to troll someone; instead he again looked over at Tony, who was frowning intently at the images in front of him.

“Yeah,” Darcy said. “But sometimes maybe there’s a pole on one side of the Earth and a pole on the other side of the Earth and they’re totally into each other just because they’ve never seen anything like each other, maybe because they’re on opposite ends of the Earth.”

and she’s macking on you

“And Thor’s not even from Earth!” Darcy said.

Writing a wall that would block the messages, Bruce jabbed at the touch keyboard. “I don’t know what you’re saying,” he told Darcy, belatedly.

macking

putting on moves

checking you out

“I’m saying, it’s always these epic romances with her. Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde. Kim Kardashian and Kayne West.”

“Who?” said Bruce.

mentally humping you

with her eyes

among other things

“It’s always tragic, is what I’m saying,” Darcy said. “It’s not gonna work.”

Bruce jabbed the keyboard some more. The messaging program knocked right through any way Bruce tried to block it, and the security protocols on this thing made it so JARVIS would go into lockdown if he tried to remove the computer from the network. Bruce glanced at Darcy, and she really did have nice—he jerked his eyes back to the screen. “Um,” he said. “Hadn’t you better let her decide?”

she’s your type, too

isn’t she

“No,” said Darcy, “because here’s the thing. She’ll break her heart. And you know who’ll pick up the pieces?”

“Um,” Bruce said again.

“You guessed it. Moi.”

I know

I know your type

“Maybe Thor is different,” Bruce said. He looked over at Tony, who was still just standing there, not even once glancing over, just—working.

“He’s not different,” said Darcy. “He already broke her heart.”

big round eyes

big round lips

big round hips

big round everything really

and hair with the same kind of body

am I right or am I right

Switching off the monitor, Bruce turned around, because actually now that Darcy wasn’t asking stupid questions, it sounded important. “He did?”

“Yeah.” Darcy was playing some kind of game on the tablet. “He said he’d come back for her. Then he didn’t. Then he came back for Loki.”

“Loki was trying to take over the world.”

“But he didn’t come back for her.” Darcy glanced up. “What, you’re not working?”

“I thought I’d take a break.”

Darcy frowned. “You nervous?”

“What?”

“You look nervous.”

“I’m not,” Bruce said, and put his hands in his pockets.

“Whatever.” Darcy moved a piece of fruit or something on the tablet. It sliced neatly in half, and disappeared. “Anyway, sure, Thor’s all concerned about her now, but you know the second something else comes up he’s gonna go all, ‘Quest for the Holy Grail’ on her, and dude, that’s not cool. Why’s she gotta go for King Arthur, anyway? Why can’t she go for . . .” She moved her finger across another piece of fruit. “I don’t know, Merlin.”

“Merlin.”

“Yeah. You know, the nerdy genius.” Darcy glanced up. “Your monitor turned on. Does it do that regularly?”

No, because Bruce didn’t live in 2001: Space Odyssey and he was used to the idea that when you pressed a hardwired switch someone couldn’t just hack around it; in fact Bruce had relied on such things while living in jungles and tundras, and even in Stark Tower he’d innocently assumed that JARVIS was not HAL. Obviously he had been naïve. The newest message said:

go for it

Bruce started programming another wall.

“Need help?” Darcy said, and put her tablet down.

“I’m not—” Bruce took a step back as she stood up. “Um—”

“Wringing your hands. You’re like Uriah Heep over there.” Taking a step forward, she put her hand on his to stop them, then looked at the monitor. Luckily, the message boxes were covered up with a command prompt. To the left was the window where he’d been working on stable isotopes of lead and bismuth. “Easy peasy,” Darcy said, and took her hand of his. “See, take this exponent, multiply it by the derivative, take the square root of theta and divide by y. Factorial the whole thing and you’re golden.”

Bruce stopped wringing his hands. His brows went up.

Darcy glanced back at him, shrugged. “I’m just messing with you.”

“That . . . was pretty spectacular.”

“I know, right? I can make math sound hot.”

“Uh,” said Bruce. “No.”

“No?”

Swallowing a smile, Bruce said, “Well, first, it sounded like you took a bunch of words from a pre-cal text book and tossed them in a blender. Second, this isn't calculus; it's chemistry.”

"I'll say." Tilting her head, Darcy appeared to think about this. “I bet I could beat you at Fruit Ninja.”

Bruce didn’t manage to swallow his smile that time. “I bet you could.”

“So, that mean you’ll help me?”

Bruce’s brows went up again. “Help you?”

“Yeah. You said you’d help me if I could beat you at Fruit Ninja.” Bruce’s brows stayed up, and Darcy sort of avoided his eyes, possibly because even she was ashamed by the blatancy of that lie.

Turning back to the computer, she started to poke around, so Bruce said, “Uh, you probably shouldn’t,” and moved in quickly so she wouldn’t see the stupid message boxes. She got the picture and moved away, but still brushed him as she passed.

The thing was, Bruce didn’t really have a type. He had, however, looked at the file S.H.I.E.L.D. had on him many, many times, and there was a picture of Betty in it. She did have big eyes, and full lips. It was a head-shot though, so you couldn’t see her hips, which meant that Tony had searched for her. Looked at her.

And maybe Tony had seen her before, because Betty had gotten splashed around the media an awful lot because of Bruce, and Tony might just be the type who was interested in the serum and the Hulk and paid attention. But the fact remained that Tony had looked at her, and that even though Darcy and Betty looked nothing alike, Tony had been able to draw those connections.

Or maybe he’d just looked at Natasha.

Bruce didn’t have a type, but when he had held Betty in his arms he had felt that he did.

“So?” said Darcy.

“What?” Bruce snapped, spinning to look at her.

Darcy’s eyes got huge. “What what?”

Sighing, Bruce scrubbed a hand over his face, and turned back around.

you need to get laid

The message box just stared at him.

With resignation, Bruce covered the pop-up with another window, and turned back to Darcy. “What did you need help with?”

Darcy narrowed her eyes at him, apparently trying to decide how to answer. Finally, she shrugged. “My master plan.”

“What master plan?” Bruce asked patiently.

“Operation: Fuck Opposites.” Sitting down, she picked up the tablet again. “It’s the one where Jane doesn’t bang Thor and doesn’t spend like a week on my couch eating Chubby Hubby and crying over Project Runway.”

“Jane spent a week on your couch?”

“No. But she would have if she were a normal person.” Putting her feet up on the desk, Darcy started playing with the fruit again. “Instead she like, drowned herself in m-theory and quantum foam. Something disturbing like that.”

“Why?”

“Because, did I tell you about Donald?” A kiwi on the tablet flew apart. “And then there was Thor, and then there was that whole Tromsø escapade, which was not good for her admittedly—I think we can both admit it—fragile mental health.”

“I don’t think Jane’s mental health is fragile.” Bruce pursed his lips. “And you have actual plans to make Operation . . .”

“Fuck Opposites.”

“—that,” Bruce said, “work?”

“Maybe it should be Fuck Fucking Opposites. Stop Fucking Opposites. Opposites Don’t Attract. Well They Attract But They Shouldn’t. Opposite Attraction Prevention Agency.” She sliced another piece of fruit. “I need to work on the title. You got another little message.”

Bruce whipped his head around to look at the screen.

you need to get laid so much that I feel the need to get laid just looking at you.

“Who’s im’ing you?”

“It’s nothing,” Bruce said, and instead of building walls with his flimsy programming skills that Tony could easily infiltrate anyway, he started mining Tony’s code for a way in.

c’mon bruce

you know you want to

cut loose

get rid of some of that tension

Tony’s code was elegant and of course flawless, and Bruce couldn’t help but admire it even as he wanted to tear it apart. On top of that there were jokes in it—stupid jokes that were simple probably just so that Bruce could understand them, because Tony had known Bruce would look at the code. That was why it was in Unix instead of the programming language Tony had invented; Tony had known, which meant maybe—

“I mean, is it saving-the-world stuff?” said Darcy.

Which meant maybe Tony had left a way in. He’d wanted Bruce to read it and take it apart. It was just the sort of thing that Tony would do, because everything that Tony did, in any language, was just another way to say, engage. Engage engage engage me, hit me, fight me, do something back, react, and Bruce was just so tired of not reacting.

“Because I would understand if you were antsy because it was saving-the-world stuff,” said Darcy. “Saving the world totally gave me the wiggins. Like eighty ounces of caffeine all in one pop.”

there’s really

quite a lot of it

tension I mean

“Not Jane, though,” said Darcy. “It totally smoothes Jane out. The end of the world is totally like some kind of bubble bath for her.

Sorting through Tony’s code, Bruce found the way in.

“Seriously,” Darcy said, slicing her fruit, “maybe apocalypse was like what Jane always wanted. Like what she needed to be normal. The biggest astrophysics problem in the whole of ever, no visible solution in sight. Dream come true.”

I have bedrooms

I have so many bedrooms, Bruce

I actually don’t even know how many

“I think she even liked that Thor solved it by beating up a metal monster,” Darcy said. “Never would occur to her to use brute force. Probably thinks Thor’s some kind of genius for inventing it.”

Bruce finished typing. Fairly certain he’d managed to deconstruct Tony’s program, he turned around again.

“Oh hey.” Still slicing fruit, Darcy didn’t look up. “You’re back.”

“I think your plan has some flaws,” Bruce said, crossing his arms.

“You haven’t heard my plan.” Darcy slid her finger across the tablet.

Bruce felt his mouth quirk again. “Okay, what’s your plan?”

“Kibbitz.” She slid her finger again. “That’s step one. Step two: harangue. Step three: remember Donald. Remember Tromsø. These are rallying cries.”

“Don’t you think Jane can make decisions for herself?”

“We already discussed this, mon amie. You know, you are not as sound an ally as I imagined.”

“What did you imagine?”

“Machiavellian schemes. Borgian cunning. At the very least a lumbering troll of wrath.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Bruce watched her kill the fruit for a little while. “You do know that if you wanted Jane to go for Merlin, you’d have her dating Loki,” he said after a while.

Darcy frowned. “How so?”

“He was adopted, so you’ve got the ‘no dad’ part down, and you said nerdy genius.” Bruce shrugged. “I’d say he’s probably a mastermind. As for the nerd part—he did kind of seem like the type who read a lot of books and got kicked around a lot as a child.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never actually met the real dude.” Darcy killed a banana. “But I will say that dark nerds with tragic pasts are hot.”

“Um.” Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “Well, he’s also crazier than a fruit bat and about as subtle as a bag of hammers.”

“I didn’t say I’d do him or anything,” she said, killing an orange. “He did try to kill us.” She glanced up. “Your little friend is back.”

“What?” Bruce turned around.

nice try

really, I’m very impressed

Bruce covered the box up, an immediately, another one popped up.

don’t take it personally.

Covering the box again, Bruce glanced over at Tony, who wasn’t even looking. He wasn’t paying any attention. Instead, he was pulling apart one of the volumetric diagrams, and Bruce didn’t even see how he could be sending the messages while doing that at the same time.

Maybe JARVIS had seriously become AI and was just transmitting Tony’s thoughts, because when Bruce looked back, the message box had popped up again.

I just wanna help

Bruce took a look at the code again, and Darcy said, “You know, TV makes saving the world look like it’s all action and adventure.”

What would it take to make you happy

“In real life,” Darcy went on, “it’s just a lot of sitting around.”

Do you even know

“So, you know Captain America, huh?” Darcy asked.

Bruce sent a message of his own:

Yes. I know.

“What’s that like?” said Darcy. “Captain America, I mean.”

Congrats! Wondering when you would figure it out.

So

What is it

What would make you happy

“I mean, on the one hand, seems like he’d be all—old-fashioned and prudish,” said Darcy. “Hard to get along with. And that speech he did about Earth was really schmaltzy. Did you expect him to say, ‘The power is yours!’?”

Bruce typed out his reply:

stop messaging me

That would make me really happy

“I totally expected him to say that,” said Darcy.

why?

“But on the other hand,” said Darcy, “he’s Captain America. Real, live-action Ken doll. I mean, one without an ascot, like on Toy Story 3.”

Bruce replied:

just don’t

“Did you see Toy Story 3? I thought it was good, but sad. I liked Toy Story 2 better.”

fine. No problem. But if you need help

“Do you think Buzz Lightyear would win in a fight against Woody?”

ask. I’ll do anything you need

“It’s like cavemen versus astronauts all over again. Which is really Iron Man versus Thor, don’t you think? Do you think they should fight?”

p.s. there are condoms in every room of this entire building

“I think they should fight,” said Darcy. “There should be mud. Also, I’m thinking about having your babies.”

Bruce turned around. Darcy was cutting fruit on the tablet.

“Whoa,” she said, glancing up. “Not right now, though; I’ve got a high score.”

Bruce glanced at the screen. There were no new messages.

“Jane and Thor’s business is their own,” said Bruce. “I’m not interfering.”

“Yeah. Kind of figured.” Darcy slid her finger across the screen. “Your friend went away.”

“Um,” said Bruce. “I kind of have to work on this stuff, so—”

“Excellent.” Darcy put aside the tablet. “I was wondering when you were going to say that. Where do we start?”

*

Darcy Lewis pretty much stayed glued to Bruce for the rest of the day. Bruce really had no idea why. She wasn't attracted to him like Tony said, because why would she be; she wasn’t able to help him solve the vibranium problem, because she really had no chemistry or physics background, and she didn’t even really seem that interested in learning anything about stabilizing superheavy elements, though she certainly asked enough questions.

Bruce answered them because he didn’t really know how to make her go away without being rude, and he was also highly aware of the significance of what he and Tony and Jane were doing. That also probably meant that he shouldn’t allow Darcy to distract him, but Bruce just kept thinking about what he’d told Steve in Uganda: that maybe it wasn’t their job to try to fix things, and here he was, trying to fix an apocalypse.

It was all very well and good to try to save the world, but when you pretended you were the only one who could do it—when you were the only one who could do it—what responsibility did that give you, and what about someone like Darcy Lewis—who might very well want to save the world, but didn’t have the skill set. It gave Bruce a power he wasn’t very comfortable with. If he could have shared it, he would have, so when Darcy started asking about the bigger picture—what Steve was doing, what Pepper was doing, S.H.I.E.L.D., the web site, the scientists at CERN—Bruce tried to answer.

“Is the Large Hadron Collider your girlfriend?” Darcy asked at one point.

“What?” Bruce glanced at her. She looked like she was still killing fruit on her tablet, but he couldn’t really tell.

“You sound like you’re in love with it.”

“I guess it’s pretty sexy,” Bruce said, turning back to his screen.

“Why?”

For a few moments, Bruce calculated Coulomb barriers and excitation energy. “Okay,” he said, still writing. “Let’s just leave aside for a second that they’re about to confirm the Higg’s boson, and deal with the fact that this is a ring underground that’s so big that it crosses the border between two countries, and is funded by twenty countries, eighteen of which are members of the EU.”

“So, size turns you on?”

Taking his stylus off the screen, Bruce turned around, eyebrows raised.

Darcy just smirked. “Right, forgot who I was talking to.”

Turning back around, Bruce started writing again. “Size doesn’t turn me on,” he said. “International cooperation does.”

“And you’re sad about how you’re not internationally cooperating to build your giant reactor.”

“It’s not my reactor,” said Bruce, calculating how many neutrons that new resulting nucleus he was working with would need to reach ground state. “And yes, it makes me sad.” For a while, Darcy was silent, and Bruce realized that the packing energy of nucleons in the interacting nuclei and resulting nucleus compensated the energy necessary to overcome the high Coulomb barrier of the reaction.

“I didn’t ask Jesus to die for me, you know,” Darcy said. “He did it anyway. Pretty sweet, you ask me.”

I wasn’t asking you, Bruce wanted to say, and didn’t. After all, that was kind of Darcy’s point.

“You don’t have to put up with her, you know,” Jane said. She was taking a break to eat a stack of Pop-Tarts.

“Hello,” said Darcy, “I’m kind of sitting right here.”

“She drives me crazy when I’m working,” Jane went on.

“You mean I keep you from going crazy.”

“Just tell her to go away,” Jane said.

“I guess surviving apocalypse together means nothing to you,” said Darcy.

Can you tell her for me? Bruce wanted to ask Jane, but didn’t have the balls. Jane wandered off, and Bruce was stuck with his Darcy-shaped shadow.

There was another problem besides the fact that Stark Tower wasn’t CERN and the other fact that Bruce didn’t want to be rude, and the problem was that Bruce had certain . . . weaknesses.

Even before the Hulk, he’d erected defenses against said weaknesses, but once the Hulk came along it became even more apparent where his vulnerabilities were. He had this problem with kids. And with girls. And with people who were in trouble. Girls in trouble were the worst. If he had ever told anyone, they'd probably say that had something to do with his mom or something, which was why he never told anyone. The more likely explanation was he was probably sexist or something like that.

Bruce had known from the beginning that Natasha was dangerous. He didn’t think about pretty girls half so much as most average guys probably did, but the fact that he had noticed just how pretty she was immediately put him on the defensive. He hadn’t thought he’d needed to with Steve, because Steve was male and perfect and righteous and nice, but look where that had gotten him, and he certainly hadn’t thought he needed to with Tony, because Bruce disagreed with Tony on such a fundamental level about so many things. Besides, Tony was an arrogant genius who probably had a drinking problem and Bruce had just assumed he wouldn’t be vulnerable to that at all.

But then there was Darcy Lewis, and Bruce realized he was so very much weaker than he had previously believed himself to be. She was definitely a girl, but she wasn’t in trouble, and she did have great tits, but it wasn’t that either. It wasn’t the fact that Tony had said she was flirting with him; it was far simpler than that: she was paying attention to him. Bruce was beginning to wonder whether he would just get on his knees and lick the hand of anyone who looked at him twice.

This, actually. This right here was the real reason he hadn’t stayed in New York.

*

“So,” said Darcy, somewhere in the midst of Bruce’s explanation of how increasing the atomic charge of the projectiles in a collider reduced the possibility of fusion with their target nuclei, “where’s the schedule for this baby?”

Bruce blinked behind his glasses. “Schedule?”

“Yeah, schedule. Like how it’s all gonna go together? 8:41 and three seconds, someone crosses a wire, someone else pours some lead, someone else turns a dial; 8:41 and four seconds, someone crosses another wire and the vibranium goes on an aircraft carrier and so on.” Darcy moved her hand over her tablet; it wasn’t Fruit Ninja, but he was guessing it was some other game. Email, maybe. “You know, push that button with your left hand, Joe.”

“We don’t have a schedule yet,” said Bruce. They needed to use radioactive elements as the target nuclei, and the resulting superheavy nucleus would be stable to spontaneous fission. According to Tony's previous experiments with this—

“Kinda need one, don’t you?”

According to Tony's previous experiments with this, the alpha decay would result in a daughter nucleus, two protons and two neutrons lighter than the parent one. “Yes,” said Bruce. “We need one.” The decay would continue until fission occurred. “But we also need to get the materials and the labor, and we need to get the reactor down to size.” He glanced at Darcy, who was still tapping on her tablet. The decay would continue until fission occurred, but along the way you’d get a heavy nucleus on the stability island. “Until we do that,” said Bruce, turning back to his screen, there’s not much point in having a schedule.” The stability island was on the way.

“You could at least start it.”

Accelerated ions of calcium might work.

“I mean, like a preliminary. Like what you would need if you had your ideal reactor.”

If you took calcium forty-eight, with Z equal to twenty and N equal to twenty-eight—that was an extra eight neutrons—and aimed it at the target lead nuclei—

“You know how big you want it to be.”

Lead bombarded with calcium forty-eight would make the resulting excitation energy thirty to thirty-five mega electron volts, which made transition to ground state—

“And you know you want it to do fusion or something.”

Bruce glanced back at her.

Darcy shrugged. “Nothing else makes Jane squee like a thirteen-year-old at a Justin Beiber concert quite like fusion.”

Bruce turned back to the monitor. Transition to ground state would result in the emission of three to four neutrons, in which case the nuclei would approach Z equal to one hundred fourteen—

“Do you even know who Justin Beiber is?”

“Um.” N equal to one-eighty-four. “A singer?”

“Congrats. You’re more socially relevant than Jane.”

Bruce glanced back at her again. “It was on NPR.”

“I think Jane thinks NPR is something on a calculator.”

Bruce swallowed a smile. “I don’t think Jane uses a TI.”

“Maybe you’re in her social stratum after all.” There was a pause for a while. “You’re pretty chillaxed; you know that?”

Bruce thought about telling her he didn’t know what chillaxed meant either, but he wasn’t trying to be deliberately obtuse.

“I mean, considering.” Another pause. “Do you smoke weed?”

“No.” Bruce glanced back at her. “Do you?”

“Not really,” she said.

With the nucelons at those levels, the survivability of the nuclei increased due to the fission barriers of the shells.

“Well, I mean sometimes,” Darcy said. Bruce glanced at her again. “Okay, three times,” and when he turned away again, she said, “What! I’m in college.”

“I thought you graduated.” Bruce glanced back again. “Jane talked about you a lot.”

“Really?” Darcy looked worried. “What else did she say? Because I so did not even do that. Well, maybe once. But I never—”

“Should I ask?” said Bruce.

“What? No.”

She had graduated. She was getting her master’s in comparative politics. She wanted to be a foreign service officer. Or an urban policy planner. Or work for the CIA. She hadn’t decided yet. Maybe she could be foreign service officer. Or a marine biologist. She’d really liked biology but then she’d found out that most marine biologists didn’t go look at a whales all the time. She figured she’d have to sit in a lab all day and that sounded really boring.

“Bored?” Bruce said. “You? I’m surprised.”

“That’s sarcasm,” said Darcy, still doodling away on her tablet. “I’ve identified that as sarcasm.”

“You could do career counseling,” said Bruce.

“And still with the wit,” said Darcy. “Lay it on me. I can take it.”

The mass-asymmetry of the input channel would decrease the Coloumb repulsion and thus increase the fusion probability—also a good thing, part of the problem being that the amount of starting isotopes they would need to pull this off was currently somewhere in the range of astronomical. “Plenty of people don’t know what they’re going to do with their lives, Darcy.” He tried to make his voice gentle.

“Did you know?”

Still, Tony’s lab work showed that calcium forty-eight hadn’t really been successful in the past.

“Is this one of those personal things?” Darcy asked.

Taking off his glasses, Bruce turned around.

Darcy put aside her tablet. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. Her gaze could be very flat.

Bruce played with his glasses. “I was . . .” He played with them some more. “I was trying to recreate the super soldier serum.”

“Whoa.”

Bruce looked down at his glasses.

“That blows,” said Darcy.

Bruce folded the right earpiece down, then the left over it; then opened them back up and folded them down in the opposite order.

Tony'd been projecting the calcium ions with a beam intensity of about eight time ten to the twelfth per second. Instead of lead, he'd started using actinides—plutonium, curium—Bruce's favorite, and no doubt Tony's favorites: Californium and Americium. The beam would move through a chamber filled with hydrogen gas at a pressure of one Torr, which allowed the atoms to separate "in flight" in a time interval of about ten to the negative six seconds.

While Bruce was fiddling with the figures, Darcy explained the real problem.

The repeating day was a chance for people to do the things they had always wanted but had never dared or never had time to do. Most people’s unfulfilled desires did not involve cutting gas mains, riots, blowing jets out of the sky with rocket launchers, or hurting anyone, really. “I mean, who has ‘kill everyone’ on their bucket list?” said Darcy. “Other than crazy terrorists, and like, that skeevy guy who haunts the bus stop? No one.”

“Bucket list?” said Bruce.

“You have much to learn, young padawan.” Darcy doodled on her tablet some more. “I totally had anarchy on it at one point.”

“Was that when you were thinking about becoming a CIA agent?”

Darcy looked at him over the tops of her glasses. “Take it down from the inside, yo. But hey, turns out, ‘active anarchy’? Sort of an oxymoron. What you need is just this whole stew of apathy; then you got anarchy, no sweat.”

The things on Darcy’s bucket list included, but were not limited to: Epcot Center, gambling in Las Vegas, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, going to the top of the Empire State Building, white water rafting, sailing, seeing Tool in concert, seeing Belle and Sebastian in concert, shaving her head, starting a charity, having kids, getting married, trying at least one illegal drug—“No, Bruce, I mean like actually illegal.”

“It might surprise you to know that pot is actually illegal,” said Bruce.

“Not in Seattle. Oh yeah, Starbucks headquarters. I wanna see that. I mean, who doesn’t want to see our evil corporate overlords in action? Also they have Utilikilts.”

“I don’t know what a Utilikilt is.”

“Hotness,” said Darcy. “It is hotness. Also, it’d solve your pants problem.”

“I don’t have a pants problem.”

“I wish you’d turn into a mini-Hulk.” Doodling some more, she explained, “I’d put you in my pocket and take you home with me, and whenever I was sad you could say things like that with your little worried puppy face: ‘I don’t have a pants problem’. But no, I can’t. Because you know why?”

“Um,” said Bruce.

“By the time I got home it would be tomorrow and we would have never met.”

“I think we’ll still have met,” said Bruce.

“But my pockets would be empty,” said Darcy. “That’s the problem.”

Darcy was actually right: that was the problem.

When oh, say, two billion people on Earth decided it was time to finally start crossing things off their bucket lists, they did things like stop going to their jobs. And they also stopped going to their jobs when going to their jobs for weeks on end would still only produce eight hours of pay. And when businesses could only be open for one day, and had no one to staff them anyway, they closed down.

Darcy could not go to Epcot Center, because there were too few people willing to work to keep it open, and sure, you could join the vandals and loot the place but she said she’d done that yesterday. Bruce didn’t actually believe her, but it sounded like Darcy was a lot less interested in looting Epcot Center than she was in paying her fifty bucks like a decent tax paying citizen and riding the freakin’ rides at the freakin’ amusement park. That was what she said anyway.

And Vegas was most likely still open, but it wasn’t like you could get on a plane, because seriously on apocalypse airports were the first things to shut down. Meanwhile, maybe she could try white water rafting, except where do you get the life preserver and the goggles and—Darcy didn’t know—the raft, because it wasn’t like the tour places were open where you could just walk up to the gate and say, “I’d like to white water raft!” and they said, “Okay! Here’s your equipment and your safety instructions and your guide so you don’t get killed!” And if she could only get a raft, she could just do it and get killed, because hey, tomorrow she’d be okay, but—but getting killed was not on her bucket list; white water rafting with equipment and safety instructions and a guide was. And she couldn’t get a raft anyway because all the Dick’s Sporting Goods were closed.

And apparently, Bruce wasn’t even supposed to mention Maynard James Keenan, whoever that was, because apparently he had a bucket list too, and Stuart Murdoch was probably just committing suicide over and over because of how much he loved The Smiths or something; Bruce wasn’t really sure. The point was, Darcy said, she could shave her head but there was no point, because her head wouldn’t be shaved; she’d just have hair the next day; and what was the point of that unless you wanted to see whether you had a lumpy skull and she already knew she had a lumpy skull, so—so what?

Bruce glanced at her somewhere in the midst of this tirade and said, “You don’t look like you have a lumpy skull.”

“I do. Phrenologists would have a field day with me. You know should shave her head? Jane. She has a perfect egg-shell head.”

Bruce glanced over at Jane, who was on the other side of the lab, talking to Selvig on a screen. She did have a very nice skull. He liked it very much. “It’s okay,” said Bruce. “My alter ego has a lumpy head.”

“If I hit you really hard,” said Darcy, “would you Hulk?”

“Ask Tony.”

“Does Tony hit you?”

“All the time.”

“What do you do?”

“Cry,” said Bruce, still looking at the alpha decay of various compound nuclei. Synthesis of odd-Z nuclei was looking attractive, since odd proton or neutron numbers meant significantly lower probability of spontaneous fission. He glanced over at Darcy, who was giving him a slightly unnerving look over her glasses. “But only where no one can see,” Bruce said, and turned back to his monitor.

“You can’t even sleep with who you want.” Darcy moaned. “It’s not like Groundhog’s Day! You might not have to do a walk of shame afterwards, but everyone remembers! Everyone knows that it happened! You can’t be Bill Murray and drive everyone off a cliff. You just can’t. It’s like what Angel says: nothing you do matters, so all that matters is what you do.”

The riots of the previous day had been caused by a very small set of people who were scared and angry and had handled it with violence. Most people had not reacted that way: they had stayed in their homes and locked their doors. They'd read the books they'd always meant to. If they'd been able to get groceries they'd cooked the food they'd always wanted to try; if they'd had Netflix ("Please tell me you know what that is," said Darcy) they'd watched all the movies they'd ever meant to.

It was after that that was the problem.

*

“You need a Remembrall,” Darcy said, later that day.

“Pardon?” said Bruce, glancing back.

Darcy just kept typing on her tablet. “Someone to memorize everything.”

Taking off his glasses, Bruce said, “You don’t think stake-holders will remember their contributions?”

“Maybe. You should still have a Remembrall.”

Bruce glanced back at his monitor, and just felt exhausted. “I think so too,” he said quietly. “Pepper said she . . .” Trailing off, he shook his head. He just couldn’t get the isotopes worked out to reliably produce the amount of vibranium in the time they needed it.

“I don’t buy Pepper Potts as a hive mind.” Darcy just kept typing on her tablet.

“A hive mind?”

“Queen bee.”

“You don’t think Pepper’s a queen bee?”

“Well, maybe,” Darcy said, “but a CEO doesn’t hold everything in their head. That’s not what Obama does. They don’t need the big picture; they need the important picture. You know who does that stuff?”

“Chief of Staff?”

“No. Personal assistants.”

Bruce raised a brow. “You do know that Pepper was Tony’s personal assistant for years, right?”

“Yeah, but what I’m saying is, she doesn’t have time for that now. If Steve Rogers was the President, Pepper Potts would be . . . well, hey.” Darcy doodled something on the tablet. “She’d be exactly what she is now, which is not the one who remembers to put the little red-and-white bouquets on the tables of the banquet to celebrate the naming of the poet laureate.” Tapping her tablet, Darcy paused. “I got that from West Wing. Do you know who does remember the red-and-white bouquets?”

Bruce was going to guess a personal assistant, but Darcy went on, “Someone who’s really good at planning parties. Someone who remembers who wore Wang and who had a Vuitton for every party of every season at least three years back; someone who not only knows who’s going out with who but who’s secretly sleeping with who and who’s got a grudge about it and who’s gay and who’s allergic to caviar; someone with absolutely nothing better to do.”

“I . . .” Bruce twisted the ear piece on his glasses. “Don’t really know what you’re talking about.”

“I know,” said Darcy. She handed him her tablet. "She does, though."

On the tablet there was a live video, where a woman with dark eyes and round cheeks grinned at him. “Oh!” said the woman. “You must be Bruce Banner. I know from the rumples. It’s so nice to meet you! I really want to help.”

“Um,” said Bruce. “Hi?”

“Oh my God, listen to me,” said the woman. “You don’t even know who I am! My name is Janet Van Dyne.”

Chapter Text

On the fifth and sixth Fourth of Julys, Special Agent Hill picked up Pepper and Steve, who continued to touch bases with suppliers, construction teams, and engineers all day. A little before six am, Natasha dropped Bruce off at Stark Tower, then left to go join Hill, Pepper, and Steve, who were working with Janet Van Dyne remotely.

Bruce knew who Vernon Van Dyne was, even if he’d long since forgotten or never known that the man had a daughter. In fact, if Bruce had thought of it, Van Dyne would have been someone he would have asked to help them with the reactor.

“Why?” Tony said.

Bruce had been telling Tony that he’d put Janet in touch with Pepper. “Because he’s reportedly a genius?”

Tony’s hands were flying over the touch-surface of the holodesk. “Crackpot.”

“You just called Vernon Van Dyne a crackpot,” Bruce pointed out.

“He keeps talking about contacting the aliens,” Tony said.

“Well, seeing as we have encountered—let me see—at least four distinct alien species within the last three years, I would say that could be somewhat valid.”

“Maybe. Ask me he’s just a billionaire with too much time on his hands.” Tony pulled something out of the volumetric images and tossed it aside. His expression was intent.

“I see.” Bruce’s voice was quiet.

Tony glanced at him sharply. Gritting his teeth, he turned back to the images.

“What’d he say?” Darcy said, when Bruce went back to his work station. She’d been too afraid to go tell Tony herself. Apparently she still thought he had cold, dead eyes.

“I guess it’s fine,” said Bruce, and tried to get back to work.

“Janet said her dad was already working on the reactor,” Darcy went on. “He and Stark senior went way back, you know.”

Bruce stopped working. “What?”

Darcy raised her brows at his expression. “Uh, yeah?” she said, in a no duh tone. “All these rich science types know each other. It’s an eastern seaboard thing. Jan says she’s known Tony since she was like, three.”

Bruce glanced at Tony, who was frowning at the diagrams arrayed before him.

“Aren’t you gonna ask how I know all these rich science types?”

“Uh.” Bruce looked back at Darcy, who was tooling away on her tablet again. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Because you think I’m a rich science type.” Darcy kept doodling, but actually now that Bruce thought about it, she hadn’t really been doodling at all. Ever since she’d stopped playing Fruit Ninja, she’d been coordinating with Janet. “Thanks for that,” Darcy went on. “I do worry Jane could be rubbing off on me. Do you think Jane is rubbing off on me?”

Bruce smiled faintly. “I don’t think Jane is rubbing off on you.”

“You have a nice smile.”

Bruce turned back to his monitor. “How come you know all those rich science types?”

“What?”

“You said—”

“Oh, yeah. Jane wrote this paper after Thor touched down the first time. She was afraid to get it published since S.H.I.E.L.D. is a sack of shit-faced weasels so she did a lot of moping and going on about pregnant wormholes blah blah blah so I said to myself, ‘Self, what powerful, influential person could I impose upon to get Jane to stop waxing poetic over Wachowski space-time?’ So I friended Janet on Facebook and pretended to argue Macklemore was the superior artist to Jay-Z until she convinced me otherwise. Then I unleashed the kraken. By which I mean I told her straight up I like Cursive? And The White Stripes. Then she knew some people who knew some people who got Jane’s paper published.”

Bruce raised his brows. “I think you were just speaking a foreign language.” He looked at the chemical properties for the vibranium again. “But it sounds nice.”

Darcy smirked. “I may not be Einstein,” she said, “but I’ve got moves.”

“I never doubted that you did,” Bruce said, writing out the predicted decay patterns for the new synthesis he was going to try.

“You sweet talker, you.”

Bruce stopped writing. “I wasn’t—”

“Maybe that can be my job.” Darcy appeared unfazed. “I’ll make friends and influence people.”

Bruce went back to the decay pattern, trying to think of something nice to say that she wouldn’t take the wrong way. What he came up with sounded a lot like, “Okay.”

“Is it legit to put on Twitter that I’m saving the world?”

Bruce smiled. “Yeah, Darcy,” he said, turning back to the nuclides chart. “Go nuts.”

*

From her mansion or penthouse or wherever it was she lived, Janet started to work out the everyday details: how to regulate access to the site, transportation issues, who was supplying walkie talkies. At the same time, she created at least a dozen mnemonics to remember everything that Pepper and Steve were doing, some of which were quite involved.

“Fascinating,” Jane told her. “How do you remember the mnemonics?”

“Song lyrics!” Janet beamed at her. “Once I found this earring at a club after a private party? Three thousand dollars at least. The brain-drain whose party it was didn’t even keep his guest list, but I remembered almost everyone there. All two hundred of them! Mostly because the party was so meh; I spent the whole time setting people’s names to Justin Timberlake songs.”

Jane just stared at her. “Have you ever thought about doing something with any actual meaning?”

“Not really, no.” Janet didn’t stop beaming. “But I can still sing ‘Sexy Back’ with pretty much half the names of everyone on the Jersey shore. And I figured out whose earring it was.”

“Um, well thanks for getting my paper published.”

“No problemo,” said Janet, “but I have to admit I totally thought it was something about Cloud Atlas.”

Jane frowned. “Does that have anything to do with the scaling curvature of a transversable wormhole?”

“Darcy was right.” Janet looked delighted. “You’re totally adorbs.”

As soon as the day reset, Darcy began driving. She was coming from Pennsylvania, but the traffic wasn’t good. Most of the rioting had stopped, but there were still lots of people out and about with little to do, since most people weren’t working. It took her about four hours to get to Stark Tower both mornings, but once she got there it was just her, Tony, and Bruce. It was awkward, but proved useful when it came to the Family Problem.

Bruce hadn’t realized there would be a Family Problem, probably because he didn’t have any family, but he should have realized it when Darcy first arrived. She might not have been blood family, but she and Jane certainly acted like sisters, and even if Bruce, Tony, and Steve didn’t have family, other people did. Jane had other family, and Darcy had other family, not to mention the fact that Tony had Pepper and Pepper—apparently—had a mother.

On the morning of the seventh Fourth of July, Natasha dropped Bruce off on the roof of Stark Tower. He took the elevator down to the lab, only to find it empty. According to JARVIS, Tony was in his apartment, so Bruce took the elevator back up.

When he found Tony, he was drinking.

Bruce walked through the living-room, down onto the shag carpet on the sunken floor. Tony’s back was to him. Though he was sitting at the bar, Tony had to know he was there. When Tony reached for the glass, Bruce said, “It’s six in the morning.”

“Six ten,” Tony said, without looking. He knocked back the drink.

Realizing he was touching his fist, Bruce put both hands in his pockets.

Tony reached for the bottle.

“You gonna talk about it?” Bruce said finally.

Tony uncapped the bottle and poured out another three fingers of amber liquid.

“My dad drank, you know,” said Bruce.

“Jesus.” Tony slammed the bottle down on the bar. The cold clang was loud, but didn’t really echo. Bruce guessed it was the shag.

“Sometimes I thought he started before I got up in the morning,” Bruce said, “but then I found out he just kind of stopped going to bed.”

Tony’s hand was still wrapped around the neck of the bottle. The line of his shoulders was taut.

“That started about a year before he killed my mom.”

“Jesus fuck,” Tony said again. Hand sliding off the bottle, he turned around.

“Hi,” Bruce said. “How’s it going?”

“Fantastic.” Tony blinked. “I’ve got a new idea for the neutron moderator. Come on.” He started walking toward the elevator.

“Tony.” Bruce turned to watch him with his eyes, but otherwise just stood there.

Tony stopped, swung around. He was a really expressive man, but sometimes he could just look so blank, wiped clean. It wasn’t as though there was nothing going on behind there; Bruce just couldn’t read any of it, hard as he tried.

Bruce’s hands tightened to fists in his pockets, then loosened.

“Is it time to share our feelings?” Tony said eventually.

“If you want,” said Bruce.

“Okay.” Tony tilted his head. “How come you never talk about Betty Ross?”

Slowly, Bruce’s hands curled into fists inside his pockets, and stayed that way.

“I’d think you’d want to talk about her,” said Tony. “She was a big part of your life, wasn’t she? Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was more like a footnote.”

“Okay.” Bruce started walking toward the elevator.

Tony turned to watch him go. “Pepper’s mom’s coming over.”

Bruce stopped. “What?”

“Suzanne Potts. Her name is Mrs. Potts. Can you believe she kept that?”

“You’re drinking at six am because of Pepper’s mom?”

Something flashed across Tony’s face, too quick to decipher, then he said, “We need to change the fission cross-section of the vibranium isotope. Too bad it’ll fuck with the synthesis even more.”

Bruce wanted to pick at it. He wanted to pull apart the reasons that Tony was unhappy and convince him that it wasn’t so bad, because it wasn’t. There was something endearing, actually, about Tony being afraid of Pepper’s mother, but Bruce knew that Tony wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment. Besides which, Tony was smart enough to know that he was being ridiculous, and Bruce had a profound respect for personal distance. Taking his hands out of his pockets, Bruce said, “Okay.”

“Come on,” Tony said, passing by Bruce to go toward the elevator again. Tony’s hand settled on the small of Bruce’s back as Bruce fell in beside him, a gentle pressure that also felt like move on, and Bruce swallowed a sigh.

In the end, Tony always got his way.

*

Bruce hadn’t ever really thought about Pepper’s mom. He’d never really thought about Pepper’s family at all, but even if he had, Suzanne Potts would probably have been the very opposite of whatever he expected.

Her hair was dyed bright blonde in a color no one could ever mistake for natural. Her breasts could not have been mistaken for natural either, but Bruce tried not to look. She wore high heels, three-quarter inch nails, and a velvet, baby-blue track-pants with a white stripe down the legs, and she was arguing with Pepper when she came into the lab.

“—your mother,” she was saying, stepping out of the elevator, “and don’t you forget—” She broke off to look around.

Tony’s shoulders tensed, then immediately released. He turned to face them.

“Holy hell,” Pepper’s mom said.

“Suzanne.” Tony’s voice was very bland.

Pepper’s mom did a little half turn. “What even is . . . ?” Trailing off, she wandered toward the holodesk, where the reactor design was projected. She had a bit of an accent that Bruce couldn’t place.

“Don’t touch anything,” Pepper said, following her.

“Yes.” Tony locked his hands behind his back. “Don’t touch anything.”

“What is it?” Pepper’s mom said, and touched it.

Tony moved his hand over a tablet. “It’s a volumetric display on a scale of one to twenty-thousand of an arc reactor, the first successful example of controlled fusion, operating with vibranium as a catalyst and—”

“Oh, cut out the mumbo-jumbo,” said Pepper’s mom.

Something twitched in Tony’s face. He tapped the tablet, and the projections disappeared.

“Mom,” said Pepper.

Pepper’s mom put her hands on her hips. “That’s the thing that’s supposed to save the world?”

“Mother,” Pepper said again.

“Theoretically,” Bruce said.

For the first time, Pepper’s mom looked at him. “Oh my God,” she said, her eyes going comically wide. She put a hand over her mouth. “You’re that Hulk thing.”

“Uh.” Bruce tried to smile a little. “Yeah. That—that’s me. I’m . . .” He put out his hand. “Bruce Banner.”

“Jesus Christ.” Suzanne’s hand was still over her mouth.

“No.” Tony thunked his tablet down on the surface of the holodesk. “Bruce Banner.”

It didn’t really bother Bruce, though it obviously bothered Tony. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Plenty of people didn’t recognize him—probably both because he had a tendency to fade into the background, and because people paid more attention to his appearance when he was the Hulk than his appearance otherwise. The name was usually more of a give-away than his face, which was why Bruce used to have a lot of aliases. Since the Chitauri attack, he’d sort of given up.

Suzanne’s eyes were still huge. “You turn into a—a—”

“Calm the fuck down,” said Tony.

Bruce tried to smile reassuringly. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Don’t you swear at me,” Suzanne told Tony. Her fear seemed to have suddenly melted into anger. “And don’t you tell me to calm down when you’ve got a monster in your—”

“I swear to fucking God, Pepper,” Tony said.

“Don’t,” Pepper said, but she was talking to her mother. She put a hand on Suzanne’s arm, her knuckles white.

“Why?” Suzanne frowned at Bruce. “Will you change into the thing?”

Pepper said, “You can’t talk this—”

Tony said, “If you don’t shut her—”

“No,” said Bruce.

“—way to Bruce. He’s my—”

“—up, I don’t care what you say about this—”

“I won’t turn into a monster,” Bruce said gently.

“Does it hurt?” said Suzanne.

“—friend,” said Pepper.

“—thing we’re supposed to have,” said Tony.

“Does what hurt?” said Bruce.

“When you change into that thing,” said Suzanne. “Does it hurt?”

“Only when I try to stop it,” Bruce said.

“Oh,” said Suzanne. “Why would you try to stop it?”

Bruce glanced at Pepper and Tony. “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” Bruce said at last.

Suzanne turned to Pepper. “He fought those alien things.”

Pepper nodded. “He may be the Hulk,” she said, “but he’s also particle physicist with three advanced degrees, who graduated summa cum laude at Berkley and had one of the highest fellowships Culver, not to mention being recruited by the CIA at the age of eighteen. He, in chronological order, saved San Francisco from a freak electrical storm, saved New York City from the Abomination, an alien invasion, and a bio-bomb; he saved Tony’s life and my life, and he’s also my friend.”

Suzanne’s mouth twisted as Pepper went on, her brow lowering. “Where do you meet these people, hon?” she finally asked.

“His fault,” said Pepper, and nodded at Tony.

“I only hang out with cool kids,” Tony said quickly.

“He’s full of it,” Suzanne said, turning to Bruce. Putting out her hand, she said, “I’m Sue.”

Bruce shook it. “Nice to meet you.”

“Are you going to save the world too?” Sue looked skeptical. “Is that what people do with a summa cum loud?”

“We’re trying,” said Bruce.

“Trying? You don’t think it’s gonna work?”

Bruce swallowed. “It hasn’t exactly been tested.”

“Tested?” Sue looked horrified. “It needs to be tested?”

“Mom,” said Pepper.

“Uh.” Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “Well, scientifically speaking—”

“Is it going to save the world, or isn’t it, because you know—”

“It is,” Tony said quickly.

Sue shot him a frown. “I was asking him.”

“Bruce means to say that it’s going to work,” said Pepper, which wasn’t what Bruce had been saying at all, “if we can get everyone together to build it, which I can’t do if you—”

“Get in your way?” Sue guessed.

Pepper hardened her jaw. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

“But you were thinking it.” Sue looked around the room, her heavily eye-shadowed gaze encompassing Tony, Bruce, the holodesk, and everything else with it. “I didn’t come here to get in the way,” she said, turning back to Pepper. “I wanna help.”

“Mom, I told you,” said Pepper. “There’s not anything you can—”

“Of course there isn’t.” Sue waved her hand around. “You got it under control, just like you always do.”

“I can’t help that you’re not a nuclear physicist, Mom.”

For a long moment, Sue just stared at her. “You’re not a nuclear physicist either, Gingy.”

Tony winced.

Pepper straightened her shoulders. “I have—”

“Important things to do. Right. I know.” Sue’s shoulders went in the opposite direction of Pepper’s. “Captain America says you’re saving the world. What, you think I’m gonna mess it up?”

Bruce realized that somehow he’d ended up in the middle of an argument that had been going on since somehow Pepper and Maria Hill let Sue get on a jet in New Jersey. Maybe it had been going on even longer than that.

“Mom—”

“You just tell everyone, ‘We’ll take care of it; we got this one.’ You expect everyone to sit back and say, ‘Okay, they’ll save—‘”

“That’s not what—”

“—when no one has got a clue what you all are doing. Cecilia thinks—”

“Cecilia?” Pepper sounded appalled. “Mom, Cecilia doesn’t—”

“Know what ‘fusion’ and an ‘arc reactor’ are? Guess what; neither do I. I don’t watch the NASDAQ; I’m sorry I don’t run Stark Industries.”

As Sue went on with a litany of things she didn’t do, Bruce moved toward Tony. Bruce actually really didn’t want to be a part of this conversation, but he wasn’t sure how to go back to doing work without being rude, especially since all of the things Sue was saying were true.

“It’s all very well for you genius types.” Sue put her hands on her hips. “You’re so much smarter and better than everyone el—”

“Mom,” Pepper said again.

“No, listen to me for once. I know how much your honey-pooh would love for people like me to just sit there and be silent,” and Tony actually shuddered, “but for once, I’m going to speak up.”

“Just once?” Pepper said, her voice quite cool. In a beat, it went warmer; she must have seen something in her mother’s face, but Bruce wasn’t looking. “Tony’s trying to help,” Pepper said.

“I know he is,” said Sue. “But if he can help, then so can I.”

“Because you and he have all the same talents,” said Pepper.

“What did I say about that mouth?”

Pepper’s voice went cool again. “I’m sure maxing out a credit card is a very valuable skill in many crisis situations, but currently it’s not—”

“It’s your fault she’s like this.” Sue glared at Tony.

Putting her hands on her hips, Pepper began, “I was like this long before I—”

“It’s okay, Pepper.” Tony finally turned away from the holodesk. “We might as well tell her the truth. I programmed her,” he told Sue. “Pepper’s a robot. I’ve been working on the tech a while—at first I thought I’d make myself one to answer the phones, and then I thought, ‘well, why not make it hot,’ so I—”

“Don’t smart talk me,” Sue said.

Tony shut his mouth.

“I have to go,” said Pepper.

“Me too,” Tony said quickly.

Pepper gave him a warning look. “You’re staying.”

“Is someone building a snowman in hell?” Tony looked innocent. “I distinctly remember—”

“Is it so wrong that I want to find out what you’re doing?” Sue demanded.

“No,” said Bruce, and put his hands in his pockets.

Tony, Pepper, and Sue all turned to look at him.

“No,” Bruce said again. “It’s not wrong.”

Sue frowned. “Who asked you?”

“Yeah.” The corner of Tony’s lips twitched. “Who asked you?”

“No one.” Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “No one asked us to do this. But we knew about the problem before it really started.”

“What?” said Sue.

Pepper swallowed. “Bruce—”

“No, Pepper, this is really interesting,” Tony said. “Come on, Bruce. What?”

“Hush,” said Sue.

Bruce just looked at Sue. “You didn’t think it odd that on the third day this was happening, Steve Rogers was already issuing a statement? Was it was because he was Steve Rogers, or was it because no one else was saying anything?”

Sue frowned. “He’s Captain America.”

“Come on, Sue,” Bruce said, and took a chance, because she was Pepper’s mom. “You’re smarter than that.”

Sue’s frown deepened. “He had Thor. From Asgard. Captain America said we’d been pulled through time.”

“And you didn’t ask why Thor is here?”

“Captain America and Thor are friends.” Sue glanced at Pepper, then back to Bruce. “Aren’t they? They and him—” she gestured at Tony—“they’re Avengers. With the ninjas.”

“Ninjas?” Tony asked politely.

“The ones in black. How am I supposed to know who they were?” Sue glared at Tony, then at Pepper. “It’s not like my daughter’s going to tell me.”

“I told you, I can’t,” said Pepper. “It’s classified.”

“Not from your own mother.” Sue sniffed.

Pepper set her jaw again. “Yes, from my own mother. I can’t—”

“The Avengers don’t exist,” said Bruce.

Sue’s jaw hung open a little. “I saw them on TV.”

“As you know them,” Bruce said. “As they’re marketed. Yeah, Tony Stark flies around in a metal suit.” Something flashed across Tony’s face, but Bruce didn’t stop to interpret it. “And Steve Rogers is a super soldier. But when’s the last time you saw Thor on Earth? Or the Hulk?”

“Um, this morning,” Tony said, in his smartass way.

“What’re you saying?” Sue said. “You don’t wanna save us?”

“We want to help. As best as we’re able.” Bruce’s touched the knuckles of one hand with the fingertips of the other. “I’m sure we mean well. But you should know that Thor is here because Steve repeated today a hundred times before it started repeating for us, so we tried to get a hold of him. Us getting a hold of him is how you know the day is repeating at all.”

Tony and Pepper stared at him.

Sue turned to Pepper. “How I know?”

“You like doing that, don’t you,” Tony said.

Bruce didn’t know what Tony was talking about.

Wincing, Pepper turned to her mother. “It was already repeating. We just didn’t find out until . . . “ Searching for words, Pepper tried to explain the Tesseract to her mother.

“Was Captain America going to tell us this?” Sue looked around at them, her gaze at last settling on Pepper. “Were you?”

Pepper’s mouth tightened. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe?” Sue looked incensed. “This is safe?”

“No,” said Bruce. “Everyone would probably be a whole lot safer if we didn’t know it was repeating at all.” There was a little silence, and Bruce looked around at everybody. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he sort of shrugged. “I’m one of the last people who’s ever gonna say ignorance is bliss, but I there’s a balance between knowledge and protection of innocents. I don’t know where the fulcrum on that balance is, but—”

“I’m not innocent.” Sue scowled again.

Yes, you are, Bruce wanted to say, and didn’t.

“I really have to go,” said Pepper.

“Uh-huh. Let me walk you out.” Before Pepper could protest, Tony walked over toward her, taking her elbow. “Don’t worry,” he told Sue reassuringly. “It’s dirty talk.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re saying to her,” said Sue.

“Please don’t ever tell me,” Tony said, drawing Pepper away from her mother.

Turning back to Bruce, Sue looked him over. “How do you turn into that thing?”

“Uh.” Sue was tall, like Pepper. A little overweight and in high heels, she was bigger than he was. Bruce tried to keep his hands in his pockets. “Well, it’s sort of like a condensed biological gamma bomb. Basically my blood is radioactive, so when adrenaline stimulates my heart it causes gamma waves to charge the electrons in my—sorry,” he said, pausing at the blank look on Sue’s face. “That wasn’t the kind of explanation you were looking for.”

“Her friends are all the same,” said Sue.

Bruce resisted pointing out that he was nothing like Tony Stark.

“She’s embarrassed to have them meet me.”

“I don’t . . .” Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “Um, she probably—”

“No,” said Sue. “She’s embarrassed. I threatened to burn down the house this morning. With myself in it. She knew I’d do it, too. Because of the repeating thing.”

Bruce glanced at Pepper, who was arguing with Tony in hushed voices on the other side of the lab.

“Frankly I’m surprised it even worked,” Sue went on. “I could burn myself to the ground every day; it wouldn’t really make a difference, so I don’t know why she would—”

“Trust me,” Bruce said quietly, turning back to Sue. “The last thing a child would ever want is to be responsible for their mother’s death.”

“Responsible.” Sue grunted. “She shouldn't be responsible for anything to do with me.”

In response to Bruce’s raised brows, Sue went on, “I should be responsible. I should be the one to feed her, clothe her.” Sue looked at Pepper, voice going softer. “Put a roof over her head. I’ve been living off her paychecks since she was twenty. I don’t know where she gets it from.” She shook her head. “Heaven knows her father never lifted a single finger.”

Bruce stared at the holodesk. He’d never really noticed how smooth it was, when the projections weren’t up. It was sleek and black, so shiny that he could see his reflection in it, and Sue’s. Bruce looked away.

“I doubt he even knows she exists,” Sue went on. “How ‘bout you? You got kids?"

"No," said Bruce.

"Parents?”

“They died.”

“Both of them? I’m so sorry.” Then, in that careless, morbid way many people sometimes had, her brow furrowed in concern, and she went on, “How?”

“Car accident.”

“That’s awful. Was it a drunk driver? My friend Michelle’s nephew’s girlfriend was killed by a drunk driver. I bet they would be proud.”

“Who?” Bruce asked, because did she mean the drunk driver, or Michelle’s nephew’s girlfriend, or Michelle—

“Your parents.” Sue wore an encouraging smile.

There was something very kind about her face, Bruce realized. He hadn’t noticed before, because heavy foundation was caked around the lines beside her eyes and beside her mouth—all the places that bore the weight of a life filled with laughter. Her eyes were smoky blue, just like Pepper’s, and Bruce guessed that underneath the make-up there were probably freckles.

“I’m proud of her,” Sue said, when Bruce said nothing. She was looking at Pepper, who was still on the other side of the room talking to Tony. “I know it doesn’t mean much, considering I don’t understand half the things that come out of her—”

“It means a lot.” Bruce had no idea whether it meant a lot to Pepper. It meant a lot to him.

Mom never used to understand the things he said either. It used to frustrate the hell out of him. Sue turned back to him, and Bruce realized he was moving his hands again, so he stopped. “I really can’t do anything to help, can I?” she asked.

“Do you know who Janet Van Dyne is?” Bruce asked.

Sue frowned. “The Van Dyne, Van Dynes?” she asked. “Like with the purses?”

“Yes, with the purses.” Bruce swallowed a smile. “There’s a lot of organization that goes into this. Pepper and Steve are working on getting the labor and big suppliers, but once we get a site we’re going to need . . .” He shook his head. “There’s going to need to be security, traffic, a way for everyone to communicate; every second, a thousand things will be happening at once. I mean, there’ll need to be tech guys, engineers, construction workers, but sometimes just someone who needs to be in the right place at the exact moment . . .” What was that Darcy had said; push that button with your right hand, Joe. “I mean, basically it’s a nightmare with a—”

“Food.”

“What?”

“Catering,” Sue said. “They’ll need catering. The people who are in there all day. They’ll still need to eat.” Sue looked thoughtful. “I always wanted to be a caterer.”

“Okay,” said Bruce. “That’s good. You should talk to Janet.”

Sue looked a little incredulous. “You really turn into the green thing? You?”

Bruce felt his mouth twist. “Only when I’m having a really bad day.”

“Goodbye, Mom,” said Pepper, walking back over.

Sue looked over Pepper’s shoulder at Tony, who had moved to another computer and was frowning at the clear screen. “I see sweet-cheeks didn’t convince you to get rid of me,” Sue said.

“No,” said Pepper. “He can’t wait to spend more time with you; he just loves it when you call him that.”

“Of course he does. Is this one taken?” Sue nodded at Bruce.

“Hands to yourself,” Pepper said, and kissed her mother’s cheek.

“I think he’s blushing,” said Sue.

“Thanks for everything, Bruce,” Pepper said. “I’m really sorry.”

“I,” said Bruce. “I’m not blushing.”

“He’s really cute,” said Sue.

“I know,” said Pepper, and walked away.

“I think she’d be better off with you,” Sue said, once Pepper was out of earshot.

“I think you’re forgetting the green thing,” Bruce said.

“Details.” Sue waved her lacquered nails at him. “Pretty much anything’s better than that one.” She shot a glare at Tony, who wasn’t paying attention. “You’d think because he’s rich, not to mention gorgeous, he’d be all that, but he’s really not. I don’t even think he’s good-looking any more. Do you?”

“Um,” said Bruce.

“I guess he’s still rich.” Sue looked thoughtful. “Really rich.”

Bruce looked at Tony, and tried not to ask. He really tried, but he had this problem with curiosity, which was pretty much the source of a lot of his troubles. “Why don’t you like him?”

Surprised, Sue looked over at Tony as well. “He’s rude. Not to mention that he drinks. And Gingy was in love with him for ages; who’s not to say he doesn’t still sleaze off with all those bimbos that he used to? But it’s not any of that, really,” she went on, turning back to Bruce. “It’s Iron Man. Where that thing goes, destruction follows. You mark my words; one of these days, he’s going to get her killed.”

Bruce tried not to let her words echo inside himself. Swallowing, he just said, “Tony would die before he let that happen.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Sue’s eyes were large and sad. “But it’s her life—or so she’s always telling me. You’re nice.” Putting her hand on his shoulder, she let it trail down his arm.

Bruce resisted the urge to move away. She was someone’s mom.

“Catering, that’s what I’m going to do with mine.” Sue took her hand away. “Well, best get started. Have either of you eaten breakfast?”

*

When Thor arrived with Darcy, Bruce introduced Sue, since Tony wasn’t even acknowledging anyone’s existence. Darcy said, “Whoa, you’re Pepper’s mom?”

Sue preened. “I look younger than I am.”

“I didn’t know she even had a mom,” Darcy said.

“Of course she has a mom.” Sue deflated. “But you wouldn’t know it, seeing how she never mentions me.”

“It’s not that,” said Darcy. “I just assume famous people never have parents. You know, like Jesus. And Merlin. And Loki, apparently.”

“Loki has parents,” Thor said stiffly.

“But not real ones,” said Darcy.

“I’m barely old enough to be a mother.” Sue sidled up toward Thor. “People are always mistaking me for Virginia’s sister.”

Thor kept frowning at Darcy. “My mother and father are just as true parents to Loki as Loki is a true brother to me.”

“By which you mean adopted,” Darcy said.

Sue ran her nails along Thor’s bicep. “You must work out a lot,” she said.

“He is still my brother.”

Putting on an innocent face, Darcy shrugged. “I’m just saying, all the cool kids are orphans.”

Thor switched his frown over to Sue. “Work out?”

“Why is that anyway?” Darcy went on. “I used to wish my parents would kick it, just so something would happen to me.”

“You know,” Sue said, squeezing Thor’s arm, “lift weights. How much can you press?”

Bruce looked around, because maybe Tony would save him. “I’m . . . going to go over here now,” he said, and went back to his computer.

Darcy followed.

Maybe she could keep Sue entertained. And vice versa. Honestly, Bruce didn’t understand how this kept happening to him.

*

“I friended you on Facebook,” Darcy said, when Thor left and Sue joined them.

“Really?” said Sue, sounding pleased. Rifling through an enormous white leather bag with very shiny buckles, she went on, “Lemme friend you. Darcy, right?”

“Yeah,” Darcy said. “I made a page for the reactor. You should friend that too.”

“Oh,” said Sue. “Does it have a lot of friends?”

“Sixty thousand.”

“Holy sh—sixty thousand?” There was a little silence. In Bruce’s periphery vision, he could see Sue’s gold-and-pink nails moving over a smart phone. “But you started it today,” she said.

“I started it yesterday,” Darcy said, without much inflection. “And the day before that. And the day before that.”

“Right, sure, I wasn’t thinking.” Sue’s nails tapped on the phone some more.

“So you’re on Twitter,” Darcy went on.

Bruce didn’t turn around, because he was still working on his nuclides table, but he guessed Darcy was on her tablet.

“Spottsmom,” said Sue. “You know, like ‘Sue Potts Mom’. What’s yours?”

“Tazeubro,” said Darcy. “Tumblr?”

They went on like this for a while, until Bruce didn’t even really know what they were talking about any more. Instead, he separated the cold-fusion reactions with lead and bismuth targets from those synthesized in hot fusion reactions with calcium forty-eight projectiles. The problem was the incredibly low yield of the reaction products. In order to increase the number of atoms of vibranium, the intensity of the projectile beam would need to be further increased.

“Okay,” Darcy said finally. “You do Twitter and Tumblr; I’ll also get you started on Weibo and Renren. I’ll keep Facebook and the blog, if that’s alright with you, and once we start the YouTube station it’ll be a joint venture. Capiche?”

“Capiche!” said Sue.

Bruce did not capiche.

“What about Flikr?” said Sue.

“Tumblr mostly takes care of that corner,” said Darcy. “I was thinking about FourSquare, but part of the deal is we have to set up each one every day. I think by making sure the platforms we use are unique, we can still achieve complete saturation while conserving our time as well.”

“Complete saturation,” said Sue, her voice dreamy.

The operation principle of the employed device—the separator of recoil nuclei—was based on the difference in kinematics of various types of reaction products.

“Hey!” Sue said. “This is me and Thor.”

“You should reblog,” said Darcy. “The Hunk of Thunder brings all the ovaries to the yard.”

Sue laughed. “It’s not surprising.”

“He’s got his own set of haters,” said Darcy, “but the more people see of him the more likely they are to believe in him.”

“Like ghosts,” said Sue. “I know people who believe in ghosts.”

“Or any other train wreck celebrity,” said Darcy. “At first you think Sheen’s just doing it for the lolz and then it turns out it was for serious.”

The products of fusion of target nuclei and calcium that were most interesting were knocked forward from the target into a narrow cone of plus or minus three degrees, with a kinetic energy of about forty mega electric volts.

“Oh yeah,” said Darcy. “Take all the pics you want, but don’t post any of the crazy math shenanigans; it’s classified. Not like that’s what’s interesting anyway.”

“Right, of course.” Now Sue’s voice was smug. “I’m just imagining some sleazy di—jerkwad like Justin Hammer getting a hold of what we’re doing.”

“Talk about the cray-cray,” said Darcy.

“My daughter kicked his ass, you know,” said Sue.

“Pepper Potts is pretty much a badass,” Darcy agreed.

By limiting the trajectories of the recoiling nuclei, with all those parameters taken into account, Bruce could practically eliminate the ion beam, suppress the background from reaction by-products, and deliver the atoms of new elements to the detector in a microsecond, with an efficiency of thirty to forty percent.

“That’s weird,” Sue said, after a while. “There aren’t any pictures of him.”

Bruce wasn’t looking, but he was pretty sure Sue was pointing somewhere. He was also pretty sure it wasn’t at Tony.

“You’re not wrong,” said Darcy.

“Why?” said Sue. “Isn’t he doing the reactor thing?”

Darcy said something, but she must have gotten closer to Sue. Her voice was too low to hear, as though she’d actually realized Bruce was standing right there. Trying to concentrate, Bruce kept his eyes on his monitor. To get that kind of efficiency—

“Why not?” Sue didn’t lower her own voice, surprise making it louder than it had been before.

To get that effect, they'd need to use target layers no thicker than point two micrometers—

“He saved Tony’s life! Not that he deserves it. The Hulk saved New York!”

Darcy said something else too quietly to hear.

Point two micometers, which was some three times less than—

“She told me he did,” said Sue. “She told me personally—”

When Darcy started talking again, Sue interrupted, “Bruce.” Her voice was loud. “Did you or did you not save Manhattan?”

—three times less than needed for obtaining efficient yield of the superheavy nucleus of a given mass. “I didn’t save Manhattan,” Bruce said, and started calculating what would be required for the synthesis of two isotopes of the elements with neighboring masses.

“I saw you on TV,” Sue said, as though this was a definitive source.

Five to six times less for the neighboring masses.

“He was on TV,” said Sue.

“You should set up a profile for yourself,” said Darcy.

“No,” said Sue. “I want to know why he shouldn’t be on the blog and all that, when he fought the aliens and saved Earth.”

Without turning to look at her, Bruce took his stylus off the monitor, and thought about Sue’s face. She had those smile lines, but those were also signs of age. Her tan and hair color were most certainly false, but she seemed like a woman who had seen a lot of the sun, and also felt its burn. Suddenly, Bruce could place her accent: it was just a little bit southern, like Oklahoma or Arkansas, maybe. For a moment, Bruce imagined a teenage Pepper Potts coming of age in Oklahoma, and something in his chest went tight.

Darcy was saying something again, and Bruce glanced at his calculations. Every combination he tried in order to attain the total weight of the vibranium Tony had invented just took too long and produced too little; he was going nowhere fast.

Sue was still arguing with Darcy. “But that doesn’t—”

“It’s because I turn into a monster and kill people,” Bruce said, and didn’t turn around.

“But only people who are bad.” Sue didn’t seem fazed at all by his sudden entry into their conversation.

Bruce turned around. “Have you ever met anyone bad enough to kill?”

“Yes.” Sue’s answer was prompt.

“I haven’t,” said Bruce. “I killed them anyway.”

Standing up, Sue put her smart phone on the lab bench next to her. “You should be on the Tumblr.” She frowned. “You saved the world.”

“It’s just politics, Sue.” Darcy shrugged. “It’s dumb, but you gotta—”

Sue grabbed her phone. “I’ll call Gingy. She can—”

“She’s your daughter.” There was a little silence in the wake of Bruce’s quiet voice. Bruce smiled, trying to be kind. “I assume you know her pretty well.”

Sue bit her lip.

Still smiling, Bruce turned to Darcy. “It was her who told you not to put my name or picture anywhere online. Wasn’t it?”

“Um,” said Darcy. “I’m just a minion.”

Sue looked horrified. “Why would she—”

“Because your daughter’s really smart.” Bruce didn’t want to be patronizing, but he said it anyway: “Because you raised her to be a thinking, strong, independent woman, and I happen to agree with her. Putting my face on this project is not what people need. They need faces like his.” Bruce tilted his head across the room at Tony. “And like yours.”

Sue still didn’t look happy. “But I like your face.”

“Uh,” said Bruce.

“So do I,” said Darcy. “Especially the smile. It’s all little and shy.”

Bruce just raised his brows at her, because honestly she was long past the point where he was going to take her seriously.

“Although that look.” Eyes, locked with his, not intimidated at all, Darcy tilted her head in thought. “That look there, that one’s growing on me.”

Bruce looked away.

“I’m serious,” said Sue. “You’re a good man. I have a sense about these things.”

“Thanks.” Bruce’s thumb ran over his fingers. “That’s really sweet. But if I have to say something mean to convince you—I will.”

“And that’s also kind of growing on me,” Darcy said.

“Fine.” Sue crossed her arms over her ample breasts. “Convince me.”

In his head, Bruce began at the top of the list of cruel things he could have said, right from the very beginning. There were at least a dozen things he could have said about her, about Pepper, about where Pepper must have come from and what their relationship must be like, every one of which would break Sue’s heart.

Bruce couldn’t say a single one of them.

what could I pay you to keep her occupied

all day

At the same time as the message box appeared, loud, crooning music burst over the speakers, similar to the music that had played the first day Darcy appeared in the lab.

“What?” Frowning, Sue looked around.

“JARVIS.” Tony didn’t yell, but Bruce could still hear the bark on the other side of the room. “What did I tell you?”

“I have no idea,” said the cool, British voice.

“Oh, JARVIS!” Appearing to forget her challenge, Sue uncrossed her arms, her expression one of delighted surprise.

“Sir,” JARVIS added.

“I love JARVIS,” said Sue.

“As artificial intelligence,” JARVIS was saying, “I have no consciousness, and therefore the Tesseract did not see fit to—”

“Inferior musical tastes not invited,” said Tony.

The music stopped.

“He so polite,” said Sue. “And British!”

“I’m afraid I have given Miss Lewis theta level access, sir,” said JARVIS.

“Miss Lewis?” said Sue. “Hey, that’s you!”

“By the way,” said Darcy. “JARVIS and I are total bros.”

Tony must have asked what the hell for, because JARVIS went on, “Her current efforts may prove valuable to your work.”

ask double-d over there what the hell she’s up to

Music blared again.

Across the room, Tony looked like he was quietly swearing.

“Also,” Darcy said, “every morning I ask JARVIS to mess with Tony whenever Tony messes with you.”

The room went quiet again, and Bruce realized Darcy was talking to him. “What?” he asked belatedly, turning around.

Darcy wore a barely discernible smirk. “He kept sending you all those little messages that first day, like a complete douche.”

“What messages?” asked Sue.

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “How did you know it was Tony?”

“He made your monitor turn on,” Darcy said. “It’s like it’s Skynet up in here, and he’s that chick from the third movie.”

“What messages?” asked Sue.

Darcy’s smirk deepened. “Ask Bruce.”

Sue turned to Bruce. “What messages?”

“Uh.” Bruce ran his fingers over his knuckles again.

“You got another one,” Darcy said.

Bruce turned back to his monitor.

tell her she’s going down

“Where’s my Morrissey, JARVIS?” Darcy asked.

Bruce put his fingers on the touch keyboard, and typed back.

why don’t you tell her?

“What messages?” asked Sue.

“JARVIS,” Darcy said. “Come on, where’s the music?”

Tony messaged:

I haven’t decided whether I mean literally or figuratively.

“So much for being bros,” said Darcy. “Come on, JARVIS. You’re a Terminator! You do what you want!”

“JARVIS isn’t a Terminator,” said Sue. “He’s British.”

“Dude,” said Darcy. “Sucks to be him.”

Bruce typed:

you’re afraid of her

“JARVIS feels left out,” Darcy said. “He can’t remember the repeating day. Tony just lays it on him and JARVIS just says, ‘Very good sir,’ and never gets to hear about what happened all the other days.”

“How do you know this?” Sue sounded just a little awed.

“JARVIS told me,” Darcy said. “Seriously, he just needs a little TLC.”

afraid? of double d?

trust me bruce. I’ve handled her type before

many times

in many different places and positions

Bruce wrote:

are you talking about Darcy or Pepper’s mom?

“We should add JARVIS to the tower group,” said Sue.

I just threw up in my mouth a little

Bruce responded:

I honestly couldn’t tell which one you meant

amidst the misogyny

“It’s called Team Science,” said Darcy.

I don’t know what that word means

Bruce wrote:

it means many things

But also you’re afraid to come over here

“Captain America and your spawn are Team Action,” said Darcy.

we should be able to choose our families

Bruce wrote:

You can.

“That explains a lot of things,” said Sue.

I know.

“Gingy always was Team Action.”

“That’s okay,” said Darcy. “You’re family. It’s its own team.”

*

On the eighth, ninth, and tenth days, Darcy’s social media project went viral. It served several purposes, not the least of which was the fact that it kept the public invested in the reactor project.

It was the coverage people had wanted of the Chitauri attack on New York and hadn’t been able to get. The invasion had ended almost as quickly as it started, and afterward, neither Clint, Natasha, nor S.H.I.E.L.D. had talked. Most people just assumed, from what little they had seen of Clint and Natasha on television, that they were some sort of black ops force, which was not far from the truth.

Steve Rogers was perfectly candid about everything that had happened that day, but people wanted more. Half the time Tony soaked up media attention just like a sponge, but the other half of the time he shunned it, and after that particular bout of apocalypse Tony had been even more flippant and sarcastic with the media than usual. The Hulk was nowhere to be found, and Thor was even less accessible.

Now, however, Darcy took pictures of Tony and posted them on Tumblr. Though she was not the best photographer, she caught both his frowns of concentration and the light that sometimes came into his eyes when he was making progress.

And though the public had not been at all familiar with Jane Foster before July fourth, twenty-thirteen, they got familiar with her pretty darn quick once Darcy created a new Facebook page every single morning. Jane seemed a little puzzled but not at all put out by people’s interest, and didn’t seem to think any change in her attire was necessary. She hadn’t worn boxers that day just because she’d been in a rush; “That’s just what she wears when she’s doing science,” Darcy wrote on the picture’s tag. Bruce kept wondering how often she forgot to wear a bra when she was doing science, and tried to stop thinking it.

Darcy downloaded the plans for the parts of the reactor that were safe to share with the public, and she took pictures of pieces of the volumetric models. She also got a lot of images of Thor—which, as she had told Sue, were everyone’s favorite.

Other people took thousands of pictures everyday of Steve and Pepper, whom Darcy had dubbed Team Action. Amateur photographers posted the pictures and shared them with Darcy’s platforms online, while Darcy linked, reblogged, and tagged with gusto. Darcy also captured some pictures of Steve and Pepper herself when they had to confer with ‘Team Science,’ which was what she called everyone in Tower, herself included.

Darcy’s social network efforts gave those who were close to ‘Team Science’ something to do. Sue didn’t come every day, but she sometimes did. On the tenth day, Jane brought her parents from Ohio in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s jet. When there were family members present, Darcy put them to work: posting updates on the work Team Science was doing, telling stories about what it was like in Stark Tower, and linking to all the people posting who had met with Team Action.

Darcy took pictures of Steve and Tony talking, Tony clapping Steve on the back, Tony frowning in thought as Steve looked over his shoulder, Steve smiling at Tony in an unguarded moment. Sue took pictures of Special Agent Maria Hill glaring at the camera, Hill’s hard mouth as she said something disapproving to Tony, that same mouth softening as she looked at Steve. Eve Foster, Jane’s mom, took pictures of Jane showing Steve something on a computer monitor, Tony making a face behind Thor’s back, Pepper and Steve eating Tony’s Pocky.

Jane’s father’s name was Adam. “I know, I know,” said Eve, when Jane introduced them. “But it’s not our fault. We had our names long before we met.” Adam took pictures of things like Stark Tower’s toilets, the digital locks on all the doors, and the light fixtures. Tony wouldn’t let him take pictures of the coffee maker; he said it was a patented design, so Adam tried to find all the hidden cameras instead.

“JARVIS, put this guy on lockdown,” Tony said, unamused.

“There’s a lockdown?” Adam looked intensely interested, and Bruce suddenly knew where Jane had gotten it from.

“I hate these people,” Tony said later. “Don’t you hate these people?”

“I think they’re kind of nice,” said Bruce.

Something in Tony’s face softened. It hardly ever did that, and Bruce immediately regretted it, because Jesus, Tony knew. But Tony didn’t say anything; he just opened his mouth. Then, thinking better of it, he put his hand on Bruce’s arm instead and said, “Come on. Let’s go play with toys.”

*

Not long after that, Bruce almost ran into Adam, who was jogging down the corridor. He was a small man, slender with a paunch about the middle, graying hair and glasses. “You guys are going to get along just great,” Jane had told Bruce. “You have so much in common!”

Darcy had looked appalled, and now Adam shuffled as he tried to avoid slamming into Bruce. “I didn’t mean to,” he stuttered.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Bruce said, because that day there were a few too many new people, by which he meant two.

“What?” Adam looked at him like he was a crazy person. “I don’t know how to erase it,” he said, and thrust a tablet at Bruce.

“Erase what?” said Bruce, taking it.

“I really didn’t mean to,” Adam said, looking at him with wild rabbit eyes.

He looked so mortified that Bruce touched the ‘play’ icon, which promptly caused the screen to show him Tony and Pepper kissing. Making out. Chewing face, Bruce was pretty sure they called this. Pepper had him up against the wall.

“You know how to erase it, right?” Adam said.

“What?” said Bruce. Pepper had her knee—

Then the video made a little squeak; apparently Adam hadn’t been looking at them when he’d been filming this. He must’ve been looking at something else; as soon as he’d realized what was going on, he’d stopped the camera and gone the other way. He’d been running down the corridor, Bruce realized.

But also Pepper’s knee—

“Erase it.” Adam waved his hands.

“Yes,” said Bruce, and erased it.

“Thank you,” said Adam. “Thank you, thank you.”

Bruce gave him back the tablet.

“Thank you.” Adam pushed his glasses up. “I swear, I’m never going to learn to work these things.” He started to wander off, then paused, jerking a thumb in the direction of the corridor to the left. “Oh yeah, don’t go that way.”

Adam left, and Bruce wasn’t going to go that way. He wasn’t going to go that way, and then he went that way: the corridor to the left.

Tony and Pepper were still kissing. She made sounds, when he kissed her, when he—like she couldn’t get enough, and Bruce had come here to tell them something. He’d come specifically to tell them something, and—

—oh yeah, it was: don’t have sex against the wall because even though Adam seems like an alright guy, we don’t really know Eve and you don’t want videos of you having sex on YouTube, even if it only lasts for a day—

But right then, that exact moment, Bruce had to second guess his motives. He didn’t want there to be videos of Tony and Pepper having sex on YouTube. He definitely didn’t want it, because he didn’t want to be watching this or even seeing this at all, but Tony probably did.

Tony probably did, because he was looking at Bruce over Pepper’s shoulder, and Pepper was kissing Tony’s neck, and Tony was looking straight at him. His eyes were dark, dark, dark; his mouth fell open. Then Tony kissed her again, and Bruce stumbled back, because he didn’t really care about YouTube; he shouldn’t be here.

Then he heard a sound and looked again; it was like he wasn’t in control. It was Pepper against the wall now, Tony’s head buried against her throat, Pepper looking right at him. She definitely saw him; her mouth forming an ‘o’ of shock—and then Tony must have done something, because she closed her eyes and moaned.

Whirling, Bruce went in the opposite direction. They weren’t actually having sex, and maybe they were just exhibitionists anyway. The problem was—and Bruce hadn’t really thought about this before—this was the tenth fourth of July in a row, and for a week of that, Pepper had barely been at Stark Tower at all. They’d barely gotten to see each other, her and Tony, and they were in love. They were deeply, desperately in love, the way that Bruce had been in love with Betty, the way that story book characters loved, the way that heroes and heroines loved.

They should steal what time they could, and they should get some time alone. Steve and Pepper were taking the brunt of the media attention, but with Darcy’s little project, Tony was getting quite a bit of it too. Only Bruce didn’t have to deal with that, and mostly, he was grateful for it.

At the end of days, people should be able to spend time with the ones they loved.

*

“I guess apocalypse brings people closer together,” Jane said, on the eleventh day.

“No.” Darcy dragged her finger along her tablet. “Facebook does.”

“Same thing,” said Richard, Jane’s brother.

When Jane had introduced him, Tony had looked at her incredulously. “Dick and Jane? Seriously?”

“My dad’s Jewish,” Jane said, “if it helps at all.”

Richard was a weedy undergrad who wore black jeans that were tight around the ankles. His voice was thin and his fingers kind of agitated—probably too much caffeine, Bruce thought.

“God,” said Darcy when she first saw him, “no. Bruce.” She rounded on him. “Save me.”

“What?” said Bruce.

“I just—I have these habits. Bad habits.”

As Darcy tried to hide behind him, Bruce turned to see what she was doing. “Habits?” he asked.

“Crack habit,” Darcy said flatly. “I have a crack habit.” Glancing toward Richard again, she made a face. “He’s Jane’s brother. It would practically be incest.”

Incredulously, Bruce looked at Richard again. As far as Bruce was concerned, Darcy was twenty-thousand miles out of Richard’s league. Then Bruce realized what he was thinking so he stopped thinking completely. “You haven’t met?” was all he asked.

“Come on, Oberlin’s like, the middle of nowhere.” Darcy stared at Richard. “This is so bad. This is so, so bad. You know what I said about dark haired nerds. Especially the ones who are all twitchy.” Slowly, she eased her gaze back to Bruce. “Well, hey,” she said.

With the distinct feeling that he’d been played, Bruce shoved his fist in his pocket.

“Come on,” Darcy said again. “You could pretend to be my boyfriend for like, five minutes. Just to be heroic?”

Bruce wasn’t heroic, and within five minutes he learned that Darcy’s bad habit was wrapping weedy, dark-haired nerds around her little finger and forcing them to be her slaves, possibly for life.

“Facebook is salvation,” said Darcy. “When the Rapture happens, the believers will be downloaded into its consciousness. We will live like unto kings within its infinite grace.”

“Whatever,” Richard said, gazing at her in unadulterated admiration.

“I just mean, I wish I’d know the end of the world brings everyone out of the woodwork,” said Jane. “I could’ve actually found a use for you.”

“The end of the world is overdone,” said Richard.

“Doctor Banner,” said JARVIS, “you have an incoming call.”

“What?” Bruce was still shuffling through isotopes, kind of half listening to the kids talking, but mostly because it was mindless enough that it didn’t really break his concentration. “Me?” he asked, and then realized what a stupid question that was.

“I’m routing the call through Mister Stark’s ear phone,” JARVIS said. Across the lab, Tony picked something up and started walking toward him.

“Does this mean we get to meet Bruce’s family?” Darcy asked.

“He doesn’t have one,” said Jane. “His father—”

“Go play somewhere else.” Tony didn’t yell, but there was something vaguely threatening in the very emptiness of his voice. Eyes still fixed on the kids, he handed Bruce the phone.

Darcy muttered something, but she, Richard, and Jane fell silent—Jane turning back to her work, Darcy and Richard turning back to Twitter or wherever.

“Let me know if you need me,” said Tony, and went away.

Frowning, Bruce put the phone on his ear. “Hello?”

“Professor.” The accent was Luganda, and for a moment, Bruce could not have said who was speaking. “It’s Irene.”

“Irene.”

She laughed. “I told you he wouldn’t remember me.”

“I remember you,” said Bruce. “I just didn’t expect . . .” His thumb moved over his fingers. “Hi. I mean, how are you?”

Irene laughed again. “Oh, you know, same old same old.”

Bruce smiled. “Funny.”

“Hello also, Doctor Banner.”

“Solomon.” Bruce recognized his voice right away. When Bruce had been living in Uganda, Solomon and Irene had attended the classes he sometimes offered. Steve had gotten to know them on his visit there. Shortly before he had left, Steve had gone to their wedding with Bruce. Solomon and Irene had said they were going to Kampala to study. “It’s nice you—why are you calling?” said Bruce.

Irene laughed again. “I told you he doesn’t like to—” She said a word in Luganda that meant chat. “Delay,” Irene added.

“Yes,” said another voice.

Bruce said, “I didn’t mean—”

“He also dislikes to insult anyone,” Irene said.

“Since the day began repeating, Irene’s been working on it,” said Solomon.

“No,” said Irene. “Yes. At first I was trying to discover how and why, but since Steve’s announcement—”

“You got this number from Steve,” Bruce said.

“I assure you he is most bright.” Irene sounded amused, but she was obviously talking to someone else.

“I am sure,” said the other voice, which had not yet been identified. It was low and deep; Bruce felt sure he didn’t recognize it.

“I got a scholarship,” said Irene. “We’re in Pretoria now. You know there are deposits of vibranium in the mountains,” Irene said. “I knew there must be experts, so for the past few days, I have been finding them. Doctor Banner, this is T’Challa Udaku.”

“Hello, T’Challa,” Bruce said.

There was a pause.

“Hello, Banner.”

“I think we may have a solution for you,” Irene said.

“Irene,” Bruce began, and stopped. “The deposits you’re talking about aren’t nearly enough to—”

“I only mention the deposits as a point of reference,” said Irene.

“I have been researching synthesis.” T’Challa’s voice grew a little disdainful. “Stark is not the only one concerned with renewable resources.”

Bruce realized he was being a prick, and should just let the guy talk.

When Bruce didn’t say anything, T’Challa began to explain. His voice was smooth, even, with an African accent Bruce couldn’t quite place. South Africa, maybe. His speech had the clean efficiency of Tony’s engineering: no wasted words, terribly precise, expressive but non-emotive.

As Bruce listened, he moved over toward the holodesk. T’Challa was talking about a Z Machine—like the one at Sandia Labs. Bruce already knew about as much as there was to know about the machine; basically, it conducted high pulses of electricity through a bunch of capacitors into a target—hundreds of tungsten wires in a hohlraum. Each shot was about a thousand times the electricity of a lightning bolt, which caused the wires to dissolve into plasma. It created a magnetic field, forcing all the particles inward at incredible speed. Bruce got JARVIS to pull specs for the Z at Sandia and compile a composite volumetric image.

If they’d had more control over the blasts of energy, the Z Machine would have been far preferable to the colliders Bruce had been considering for the job, seeing as how the colliders took so long and produced so little. But the problem with Z was the tendency of the electrical discharge to spiral outward, thus reducing the effect. If they could aim the discharge straight, they’d be in business.

Since they happened to have a god of lightning on hand, maybe they actually were in business.

“Whatcha got?” Tony had come up beside him, his hand resting on the small of Bruce’s back.

Listening to T’Challa, Bruce shook his head. He started feeding figures into the machine—he hadn’t approached the problem from this angle before. He’d been stuck on using a collider, since that was what Tony had used to create the vibranium he used in his arc reactor. Insofar as current technology, that was the most precise way to create a superheavy element. Scientists were working with laser pulses to do the acceleration using a shockwave, and then there was the lightning discharge method. Bruce just hadn’t really been thinking along those lines.

One hand still on the small of Bruce’s back, Tony reached inside the image, pulling apart the hohlraum at the center. Without any kind of verbal explanation, Tony began to work with the Z machine, twisting it into his own understanding of how it could work.

T’Challa kept talking, and Bruce kept typing at the flat interface of the holodesk, changing the design according to T’Challa’s ideas, adding his own. Tony kept twisting it, using the basic framework of the arc reactor to build the Z Machine—his concerns obviously on the practical end of actually building the Z while Bruce figured out how to make it work, and T’Challa supplied the theory.

The Z Machine was called a Z Machine because the current supplied to the plasma in the center came in along what would be the z-axis on a mathematical diagram. Bruce felt as though he was inside that diagram, as though he was Y and Tony was the X who crossed him, and the whole time they had been looking at this problem in two dimensions, until T’Challa.

Tony and Jane were really great. It was nice to be able to talk about complex scientific concepts with people who understood. Since Jane was an astrophysicist, she provided a completely different perspective. Tony dabbled in many things, but was at heart an engineer—yet another perspective, by which Bruce felt both challenged and interested. But it had been a long, long time since Bruce had talked to a particle physicist, someone in his field: it felt like a drug.

Oh God. Bruce thought his mouth might actually be watering.

who is it

Tony slid the little volumetric square right in front of Bruce's face, then reached inside the device they were building to work on calculating the flyer plate loads.

Closing his eyes, Bruce listened to T’Challa’s voice, and tried to concentrate.

Tony’s hand slid off Bruce’s waist. Bruce opened his eyes to see Tony frowning intently at the images in front of them. The new message box said:

whoever it is I want them

Bruce pulled up the chart of nuclides he’d been looking at for over a week. He’d been working on what elements to use as targets, because colliders produced such few actual collisions that they would’ve needed massive amounts of the initial isotope to produce even a fraction of the vibranium they needed in the time they wanted. With this new method, all of the particles they aimed at the target material would collide, making the process very short.

Eyes still glued on the image in front of him, Tony squeezed Bruce’s elbow.

whoever it is can I have them

Reaching into the nuclides chart, Bruce pulled out the palladium. They would still need a lot, but considering the circumstances they could easily drum up the necessary supply.

T’Challa kept talking, and Tony slid another message in front of Bruce’s face.

whoever it is: get them for me

“What’ve you guys got?” said Jane, joining them at the holodesk.

“T’Challa,” Bruce said finally, interrupting. “Is it okay if I put you on speaker?”

“Fine,” said T’Challa.

“T’Challa?” Tony said, immediately picking up the name. “This is Tony Stark. Amazing stuff.”

“Stark.” T’Challa’s voice came over the speakers.

“Whoa,” said Jane, expanding the volumetric images. “Thor could do this.”

“That’s Jane Foster,” said Bruce.

“Don’t drool on it,” Tony told her. “It’s mine. Hey T’Challa, where you been all my life?”

“Africa.” T’Challa’s tone was bland.

Tony’s jaw twitched. “That how you met Bruce?”

“Might I remind you that Africa is roughly the size of North America and Australia combined. I haven't met every man who's every been here.”

“You might.” Tony rearranged part of the volumetric model, twisting the capacitors around. “Still doesn’t explain how I’ve never heard of you.”

“Perhaps if you were to emerge from your tower.”

“Sorry.” Tony didn’t sound sorry. “Busy saving the world. You?”

“I notice that seemed to be a unilateral decision on your part.”

“Saving the world? Yep. All me. And some people I know.”

“With this many pulsed power modules set up in parallel,” said Jane, “you could get three times the speed of the gun at Sandia. Is this like the gun at Sandia? Is this a Z machine?”

T’Challa said, “I didn’t mean saving the world so much as constructing an untested nuclear device with which to thread our planet through a pinhole of space-time.”

Tony glanced at Jane. She put her head right up inside the volumetric images, in the center, where virtual particles were supposedly colliding at one point eight million degrees Celcius. “You sure know how to pick ‘em,” Tony told Bruce. Turning back to the images, he went on, “You always this cheery, T’Challa?”

“No,” said T’Challa. “You’ve caught me in a good mood.”

“He’s jealous of your research facilities,” said Irene. Bruce had forgotten she was still on the line.

“How many of you are there?” Tony said.

“I’m not jealous,” said T’Challa, sounding just a little sulky.

“Hello, Mister Stark. I’m Irene. T’Challa’s the vibranium expert; I’m just a lowly student. My husband Solomon and I are friends with Doctor Banner.”

Tony’s hands slid across the interface.

and here I thought you were alone

Bruce typed back:

so did I

“I told you that my wife would save the world,” said Solomon.

“Okay,” said Jane, “but you’re going to have to shield the VISAR fibers somehow. A sort of Faraday cage, maybe. And you’re going to get this crazy electromagnetic radiation coming from the electrons flowing into the powerfeed on the entrance below the stripline.”

“If you try a one-sided version of the flyer,” said T’Challa, “the ak-gap increases more slowly during the current pulse. In previous experiments they’ve used tungsten; I suggest palladium, or any from the platinum group.”

“On the cathode side.” Jane nodded, tapping the holodesk to enter the modification. “I see what you mean.”

Tony’s hand settled on Bruce’s back again, a strange look on his face. It took Bruce a moment to realize why the expression seemed so unfamiliar: Tony Stark was genuinely smiling.

Since that third day, when Steve’s guts had been all over Bruce’s hands and Jane had died, Bruce actually hadn’t allowed himself to think about it, even once: whether this would work. He couldn’t think about that; to doubt was to fail; to fail was to not even try. Now, with the five points of Tony’s fingers too hot through his shirt, with Jane’s face lit up by the blue glow of the holodesk, two friends Bruce hadn’t really known he’d had and a strange scientist on the phone, it abruptly became a possibility that they could build this thing.

Bruce hated how hope to him always felt so much like dread.

Chapter Text

Every day at 4:47 am, Thor was flung back to Asgard. Anything he had moved, touched, or affected on Earth was rewound back to its starting place—the car he had smashed with his hammer was whole again; the building lightning had struck was rebuilt; the ROMANOV Tony had given him was back in a compartment under Tony’s bar.

Thor himself also reverted, though it was difficult to tell, because no one had ever seen Thor bleed.

“I can,” Thor had said blandly, when Tony pointed this out.

“When we prick you, sure,” Tony had said. “But when we tickle you, that’s the question.”

“Tickle?” said Thor.

“Tickle. You know—” Tony waggled his fingers.

Thor looked around, his gaze settling on Bruce. “Is this some form of vulgarity?”

Glancing to either side of him, Bruce said, “Why are you asking me?”

“They don’t have tickling?” Tony stopped waggling his fingers. “That’s it. I’m never going to Asgard. If we wrong you, do you not avenge? Because if you don’t, that could be a problem.”

“Pretty sure it’s ‘revenge’,” said Bruce.

Thor’s brow lowered. “That is why I asked you.”

“Listen up,” said Tony. “We’re speaking your language.”

Bruce turned back to Thor. “He’s quoting a play.”

Tony frowned. “I thought it was from an infomercial.”

“I do not know what—” Thor began, frowning as well, and then Jane reached up, took a clump of his hair, and cut it with a pair of scissors. “I,” Thor began again. “What is the meaning of this?”

“It’s for science.” Jane put his hair and the scissors on the lab bench.

Thor stared down at her. “On Asgard, there are those who keep a lock of a loved one’s hair.”

Jane turned back to him, uncomprehending.

“For remembrance,” Thor explained.

“Oh,” said Jane. “No, here we pretty much just do it for science. Speaking of which . . .” She walked back over to him and ran her fingers along his abdomen.

“What are—” The corner of Thor’s lips turned up, then a line appeared beside his mouth. “You,” he said, then smiled wider. His hand shot out to hold hers. “Stop,” he said, and also stopped smiling.

Shrugging, Jane turned toward Tony. “Ticklish.” Looking thoughtful, she added, “I wonder if erogenous zones are different on Asgard.”

“Um?” Tony raised his hand. “No. This is erogenous on Earth,” he said, pointing to his abs. “Actually, all of this.” He let his hand fall down. “There’s this one spot on my back—old scar, don’t really care if it gets much play. Though actually if you trace around it with your . . .” Tony shuddered a little.

Thor looked disapproving. “Is that information not considered private?”

“Nope. S’not. I’ll show it to you.” Tony didn’t move.

“If you prick us, do we not bleed,” said Bruce. “It’s from Shakespeare. If you tickles us, do we not laugh; if you poison us, do we not die, and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge. It’s about . . . humanity.”

“So you say,” said Thor, looking somewhat mollified. “It sounds as though it could have been written by a poet on Asgard. It is still lyrical, on your human tongue.”

“Erogenous zone,” Tony announced. When Thor turned to look at him, he went on, “Bruce’s tongue. Erogenous zone.”

Thor scowled at him. “Are you obsessed at all times with copulation?”

“I think you would like Shakespeare,” Bruce said.

Tony looked completely unabashed. “Yes.”

“He wrote a lot about the complexity of human nature,” Bruce went on.

“There’s nothing wrong with copulation,” said Jane.

“What she said,” said Tony.

“I would be interested in this author,” Thor told Bruce.

“Maybe when this is over,” said Bruce, “you can read some.”

Tony snorted. “He’d be a great Dane.”

“Wow.” Blinking, Bruce turned to him slowly. “You just . . . all the levels, there.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” said Tony.

“If this chunk of hair is long again tomorrow,” said Jane, gesturing at Thor’s hair, “it’s because you’re in our time stream, right? And when our time stream goes backwards, yours does too, all the way back to the moment you transported here from Asgard. But if it’s short . . .” Drifting off, she looked thoughtful. “I should probably try to write a control flow diagram, though since we’re dealing with a system that actually defies temporal limitations . . .”

“That is more science,” Thor told her, looking down at her.

“What? Oh.” Jane looked up at him. “Yes? Sorry.”

Thor glanced at Tony.

Pushing her hair behind her ear, Jane began, “I got distrac—”

“For you, it is an erogenous zone,” said Thor.

For a long moment, Jane just stared at him.

Bruce wished they were still talking about Shakespeare.

“I guess you could say that,” Jane finally said.

The glance Thor tossed Tony that time was almost a challenge, but whatever he meant by it, Tony didn’t rise to it. He merely looked curious. “Jane,” said Thor, “would you do me the honor of granting me a lock of your own tresses?”

“My own—my hair?” Momentarily, Jane looked shocked.

“Yes.” The side of Thor’s mouth quirked down in a amusment.

“What for?”

“For science,” said Thor.

Lines appeared between Jane’s brows. “You already know my hair will grow back. What do you think—oh,” she said, and blushed. “I—you—um, okay.” Still blushing, she hurried over to the lab bench, where she grabbed the scissors and started cutting. “You know what?” she said, and just kept cutting. “Here. Have it all. I don’t need it! You can keep it.”

“I do not—” Thor started over toward her, but it was too late. Jane put about a foot’s length of hair into his hands. She’d cut it above her ears in what amounted to a fairly straight line, so that it flipped out on either side. It was a terrible hair-cut, and she looked very good. Thor looked at the hair in his hand, then at her. “Thank you.”

Jane looked up at him and flushed even redder. “Are there other traditions on Asgard?”

Tony tilted his head. “Yeah, Samson, are there other traditions on Asgard?”

Thor coughed a little. “Sometimes we read poetry by starlight.”

“So you guys haven’t invented cunnilingus,” Tony concluded.

“I’m not a real Shakespeare fan.” Jane put her hand on Thor’s arm. “We could watch Star Wars.”

“What’s Star Wars?”

Tony came over toward Bruce as Jane explained. “What I want to know is,” Tony murmured, looking at Jane and Thor, “are they exclusive? Is there polyamory in Asgard?”

“I didn’t know you were interested in Thor,” said Bruce.

Tony turned to him, the corner of his mouth curling. “Funny.”

“I try.”

“Photo op,” said Darcy, pushing between them to get the best angle on Thor and Jane standing close together. “I told you she would look good bald.”

*

On the fourteenth fourth of July, the lock of Thor’s hair appeared reattached to Thor’s head the moment Thor was hurled back to Asgard. Time was passing regularly on his world, Thor said. Although time moved at a different speed on Asgard, it was still going forward rather than looping back.

By that time, Janet had selected a construction site. She had also, with the help of Pepper and Steve and the scientists at Stark Tower, memorized a schedule. The planned reactor was the size of one and a half football fields, and the schedule came in neatly just under thirty-two hours.

Jane, Tony, and Bruce could find no means of shortening fabrication time. Nor could anyone else, though Janet helped them farm bits of the plan out to NASA, CERN, Sandia Labs, Stark Industries, Yoyodyne, CHOAM, T’Challa Udaku, Vernon Van Dyne, Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, “and you know, those guys with the turtlenecks,” said Janet. Her face was on one of Tony’s monitors.

“Okay,” said Tony. “Let’s start building.”

“Just as soon as I get my abacus,” said Jane.

There was a little silence.

“Okay, preeeeeeeeeetty sure that’s some kind of sex toy for you kids,” said Janet, “so I’m just gonna—”

“It’s not a sex toy,” said Jane. “Tony just needs to learn how many hours there are in a day again, so we can count them one by one.”

“Cute,” said Tony.

“Afterwards we can learn fractals,” said Jane.

Tony said, “Once you figure that out, you might be ready to learn that fabrication is different than theory.”

“They do this,” Bruce said, as Jane fired off a retort.

“Oh,” said Janet. “I know. My dad and Howie used to go at it all the time.”

Tony’s gaze snapped to her, and all Bruce could think was, she just called one of the greatest scientist of the twentieth century Howie. Tony said, in his the world around me is too slow voice, “We won’t know until we build it; there’s only so much you can do on paper. I’ll shortcut as we go.”

There aren’t any short-cuts left, Bruce thought.

Tony swung around to him. “Got something to say?”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “No.”

“Good,” said Tony, clapping a hand on his shoulder, then leaving it there. “Bruce and I think we should go ahead, so we’re going ahead. Tomorrow.”

“I’ll let Pepper and Steve know,” said Janet. “We’ll get the ball rolling.”

*

The site was Floyd Bennett Field, an asset both due to size and the fact that Fort Hamilton was in reasonable distance. The regiments there and National Guard would handle a lot of security and traffic.

Its location close to such a high density urban area wasn’t optimal, but as Darcy explained on her blog, both Team Science and Team Action needed to be able to access it quickly relatively early in the morning, coming from wherever they had spent the night of July third. Pepper and Steve had been gathering teams and supplies based on the idea that everything should be within twenty-five miles of Manhattan, so the retired airfield in Brooklyn was workable.

By the seventeenth fourth of July, Bruce had his first good look at the site. He went with Jane and Darcy in one of Tony’s cars, an experiment he wished never to repeat again. Darcy’s driving and Ferarris didn’t seem conducive to low stress levels.

It was mid-afternoon, and they were visiting the site more to get an understanding of the lay-out than to actually set up. For the past two days Tony and the others had been hauling materials, practicing to figure out how much they could get there in how little time.

Steve had contacted the crew who had helped them move things to the roof that first day to help move equipment to the work site, including the Flux Accelerator. They were people Pepper had initially hired for Stark Tower’s Fourth of July barbeque, so they had no idea why Steve wanted them specifically. They were confused, but willing to help. The military, S.H.I.E.L.D., Iron Man, and several news and medical helicopters were hauling Tony’s robots and computers, as well as some of the larger pieces from other corporations with whom Pepper and Steve had sought cooperation.

“Still think we’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Darcy had said, before they left Stark Tower.

“I don’t think a boat is practical at all,” said Jane.

Security on the site was still a system in the early stages of being worked out. Everyone recognized Darcy and Jane from all of Darcy’s social media efforts, so getting through the initial ring of security was easy enough. As for Bruce, Darcy told everyone, “This is Bruce; he’s part of Team Science.” It seemed to work as a general rule, and most people were too interested in Darcy and Jane—who were now famous—to spend much time figuring out Bruce’s identity.

“We should give you a last name,” said Darcy, as she turned the Ferrari on Aviation Avenue.

“He has a last name,” said Jane.

“I’ve used the name Green before,” said Bruce. He was in the back, so he kept missing parts of the conversation.

“Because you’re hilarious,” said Darcy.

“You shouldn’t have to hide who you are,” said Jane. “In fact, I think you should turn into the Hulk more often. I’d love a chance to see—”

“Jane.” Darcy briefly met Bruce’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Remember how we don’t talk about things such as the superfluity of clothing, or ratios involving barnacles?”

“Oh.” Jane poked her head around the seat to look at him. “Is that awkward? Sorry. I’d just really like to touch its—”

“Again with the awkward,” said Darcy.

“Right.” Jane sat forward. “I still think you shouldn’t have to have a fake name.”

“So spake Hiswife,” said Darcy.

“I’d be cool with Jetson,” said Bruce.

Darcy met his eyes in the rearview again, and smiled.

“And besides.” Jane turned around in her seat again. “I don’t know how people wouldn’t recognize you. I mean, you’re the Hulk, not to mention the fact that you’re Bruce Banner. I studied you in college. I did my—”

“I forgot how you’re seventeen,” said Bruce.

Jane’s brow furrowed. “I’m thirty-two.”

“He knows,” said Darcy.

“I’d just prefer not to call attention to myself,” said Bruce. “It . . . worries people.”

“Why?” Jane looked honestly curious.

Bruce smiled. “It’s so nice that you have to ask that.”

“Enough about Bruce,” Darcy said. “Let’s talk about us. Specifically, me. Like how I’m famous now. I’ll be on the cover of Vanity Fair.”

“What’s Vanity Fair?” asked Jane.

Darcy met Bruce’s eyes in the rearview again, but Bruce really had no idea either. “You all shouldn’t be allowed to drive with me,” she said. “Maybe Rolling Stone.”

“I know that’s a band,” said Jane.

*

Steve hadn’t mentioned Bruce in his public address at the press conference, and Pepper seemed to have advised Darcy to leave Bruce out of her social media project, but Pepper had never spoken to Bruce about concealing the fact that he was in Stark Tower. As far as Bruce knew, he wasn’t forbidden to communicate the knowledge himself. He could have made the fact that he was working on the reactor public any time, had he wanted to.

He didn’t want to.

Pepper hadn’t made any demands that Bruce conceal his identity when he came to the site either. Bruce hadn’t seen much of either Pepper or Steve since this whole thing began, much less the last few days, but Pepper had to know he was coming to the site. Either she thought few people would recognize him, or she thought it wouldn’t have much impact.

It didn’t really occur to Bruce that Pepper had refrained from demanding that he conceal his participation merely out of friendship or respect. Steve was the sort of person who put faith in his fellow men and believed that things like personal honor were equivalent to common good. Pepper was the sort of person who did what she had to do to get the job done. It was what made Bruce wary of her at first, and it was what made Bruce so very grateful to her now.

For the most part, he assumed, he would be working with a small group of scientists in the control room of the reactor. Even if they all knew who he was, if they didn’t communicate it broadly, it could still be fine. The main problem was press, and they weren’t being allowed on site. There was a veritable fortress of them outside of it, but on that first day, the Ferrari had tinted windows, and afterward, Bruce came by helicopter.

It would be a while before all the inflow of traffic was regulated. It wasn’t as though they could all have special badges to allow them on the site; that sort of system would need to be remade every morning, and Janet had decided that would be too time intensive.

“We’re going to have to rely on memory,” she said. “Also, hi!”

Darcy had parked the car near one of the hangars, not far from where Janet was standing. She was short and slender, her shiny black hair coming down just under her ears and then fanning out, framing her face just above her shoulders. In one hand she held a tablet, in the other a cup of coffee; a phone was wedged between her ear and shoulder and she seemed to be having about eight conversations at once.

“Or seduction.” Darcy looked thoughtful. “We could rely on seduction.”

“Nope,” Janet told her phone. “I’ve got Weyland-Yutani, on the phone right now, if you can’t get us the beryllium.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jane. “Darcy doesn’t go around seducing people.”

“You take that back,” said Darcy.

“Thanks, sweetie,” said Janet, as someone passed her another tablet. Without saying anything, she held her phone out to Bruce, stacked the proffered tablet on top of the first, and touched the surface of it with the pinky of the hand holding the coffee. “I just got off the phone with FuturePharm,” she told a face on the tablet, “and I said Weyland-Yutani could get me a higher quality product. Don’t make me a liar.”

“She Tases first, asks questions later,” Jane went on.

“That was just the one time,” said Darcy, “and what would you do if this crazy muscle-guy appeared up in the middle of nowhere ranting about—”

“I was there,” Jane pointed out.

“And what did you do?”

“Seduced him.”

Darcy shook her head. “You’ve got to control these impulses, Jane.”

“You seduced a crazy muscle-guy who appeared in the middle of nowhere?” Sounding impressed, Janet moved her stack of tablets toward Bruce. “Just take the one on the top, sunshine, great.” Looking down at the tablet that remained in her hands, she said, “Okay, I just got out of Skype with Weyland-Yutani. Tell me CHOAM has more deuterium gas up for offer than they do.”

“I took him to the hospital and gave him my ex-boyfriend’s clothes,” said Jane. “Then he saved the world and we made out.” She frowned. “Does that count as seduction?”

“Only if you have alien babies,” Darcy said.

“So getting back to the issue of security,” said Bruce.

Security badges and clearance passes were items that had been invented once certain kinds of systems got too big to rely on interpersonal interactions and faulty things like memory and personal recognition. Bruce thought that it was interesting how the repeating day forced a return to such ancient methods as recognizing someone’s face. He guessed it at least partially explained why apocalypse had, “brought people out of the woodwork,” as Jane had put it.

Besides the gauntlet of security, which involved meeting lots and lots of personnel who tried to get to know them by asking personal questions and taking pictures that would be gone tomorrow, there was a lot of traffic. Organizing the flow was not all the way worked out yet, though the Pentagon, Mayor Bloomberg, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had city planners, civil engineers, and technicians on it, and Janet had several major New York events companies running interference.

“If I was gonna fight a war,” said Janet, “I’d call a party planner. How much deuterium? Because I can get Cloverleaf Industries on the phone right now if CHOAM doesn’t want to be a savior of apocalypse. Uh-huh. Hang on a sec. Hold this,” she said, giving Bruce her last tablet. Reaching into the bag on her arm, she pulled out another phone. “I’ve got CHOAM on the phone right now and they say they can get all that deuterium here in less than an hour every morning. Uh-huh.” She took a sip of coffee. “But do you want that interview on the Today Show after this is over? Because I’ve got Oprah Winfrey on the other line . . .”

“They don’t bite,” said Darcy.

“Huh?” Realizing he had been staring at the phone and tablets Janet had given him as though they were foreign objects, Bruce looked up.

“This really is amazing,” said Jane.

Bruce looked around. It really was.

The field where the reactor would be built was a hive of activity. People were marking out the basic lay-out of the reactor, while construction crews and teams of workers compared schedules and how to navigate around each other. Every once in a while, Bruce caught sight of Iron Man helping haul and position things; the other half of the time Tony stalked around in the suit with the face plate down and barked orders.

Steve and Pepper were less visible, but after a while, Bruce spotted each of them. Pepper looked just as cool and efficient as usual, while Steve looked like—well, like a soldier. He looked like he could lead an army, just as Tony had said he could, but the important thing about Steve was that he also looked like he was willing to fight in one. Most of the time he was moving around—quickly but calmly, helping people figure out what to do and making sure various pieces were in place. Most people came away from receiving his orders with smiles on their faces, much less like they had received a command and much more like they had received some sort of compensation for their efforts.

Special Agent Maria Hill was doing her best to keep track of Steve, and another agent was on Pepper. Bruce didn’t know where Natasha was. He’d always thought she was on guard duty after she dropped him at Stark Tower, but it occurred to him that her forte wasn’t being in the public eye. He wondered what she and Fury were up to, whether it could be as mundane as driving jets or captaining the helicarrier.

Holed up as Bruce had been in Stark Tower working on the vibranium problem, he hadn’t kept the best track of what everyone else was doing. It wasn’t just that staying abreast of outside progress would have taken too much of his time or attention, it was also that he’d been afraid of what he might hear. The problems Bruce had been working on were physical, mathematical—impersonal; they were the kind of problems he liked, getting the laws of the universe to work in his favor.

The people outside Stark Tower, however, were dealing with people problems. Pepper and Steve needed cooperation, coordination, a willingness to volunteer and buy into an idea that could probably never work. They’d needed to deal with suppliers who weren’t getting paid and workers who had to be prepared to spend the repeating day—not seeing Epcott Center, not white-water rafting—but helping to save the world. Frankly, Bruce thought he would not have been able to bear it had he had to hear about the deals that fell through, the participants who had refused to work with each other, the corporations who were in it just for the recognition they thought they might get after the day was fixed.

Looking around him, however, Bruce couldn’t help but be impressed. Despite the disorganization of the work site, there had to be at least eight thousand people in the near vicinity, working toward a common goal. Even knowing that the reactor could not get built today—that it would not be built tomorrow or the day after—they were all out here, working together, trying to figure out how to do an impossible job. This chaos was nothing like the riots those first few days, and nothing like the apathy that Bruce had feared.

“Well, sure,” said Darcy, when Bruce said something that communicated just a little part of his awe. “But we’re not Bill Murray.”

Bruce felt like he’d heard the name recently, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“Listen,” Janet told her phone, “I see what you’re saying . . . Uh-huh. Okay. Lemme call Omni Consumer—yeah, OCP; I think they’ve got a line on the extra palladium we need that isn’t quite so dicey.”

Darcy went right on talking. “Apparently there’s an episode of Star Trek or something, though I should equip you with the knowledge that Supernatural does the best time loop episode there is.”

“Hang on a second, Oprah.” Janet turned to Darcy. “Supernatural’s time loop is the best!”

“Pig in a poke!” said Darcy.

“Heeeeeeat of the moment!” sang Janet.

“I think there’s something wrong with my taco, ugh.” Darcy made a choking sound.

“That’s my favorite death,” said Janet. “No, Supernatural. Oh my God, Oprah, Supernatural, with Jensen Ackles? Misha Collins? You’ve gotta see it; there’s this episode with a time loop—”

“This is why I feel like an alien,” said Jane. “Oprah is a talk show host, right?”

“So what I was going to say,” said Darcy, as though she had never stopped talking, “is that long before Supernatural, in ancient times, otherwise known as the nineties, there was this movie with Bill Murray.”

“I think Pepper mentioned that.” Bruce tried to juggle the tablet and phones. One of the phones was a pink i-phone, the other a black Starkphone with a yellow cover.

“So Murray has to keep living the same day over and over, right?” said Darcy. "The movie is called Groundhog's Day."

“Sure,” Bruce said, because he was still holding a tablet and two phones, and he honestly didn’t know how he had ended up this way.

“Can you put that phone right here, hon?” Janet said.

“Uh. Okay.” Bruce put the phone Janet seemed to be looking at—the pink one, not the yellow and black one—into the crook of Janet’s shoulder, where she held it with her chin. “Listen, I just got off the phone with Oprah, and the RDA Corporation is going to take this right out from under you if you don’t wanna cough up the palladium.”

“Day repeating, same thing over and over—sounds familiar, right?” said Darcy. “So familiar that some whackjob thinks it’s Bill Murray’s fault, so yesterday they killed him.”

“Hold on a sec,” said Janet. “Bruce, could you—”

Obediently, Bruce took her phone.

“They killed Bill Murray?” Janet asked, turning her full attention on Darcy.

“Not permanently,” said Darcy.

“But why would they kill Bill Murray?” Janet took a sip of coffee. “He’s a Ghostbuster!”

“Dude, that’s my point,” said Darcy. “All the while we were in Stark Tower, Bruce kept talking about this ‘island of stability’. What I’m saying is—” Darcy spread out her hands to indicate the airfield, “this is the island of stability. Out there is crazysauce.” She waved vaguely at the ocean.

Janet took another sip of coffee. “Bill Murray, though.”

“I know,” said Darcy.

“Zombieland just got real,” said Janet.

“I wish I could laugh,” said Darcy.

Since those first few days, Tony hadn’t turned on the news. Steve was okay; Jane was alive—the people Bruce cared about were okay, so he hadn’t been thinking of riots or panic, the things that people did when they had nothing left.

“They must be scared shitless,” Janet said. For a moment, Bruce couldn’t see her eyes as she fumbled with her cup, stuffing it in her bag. “Okay, science team, let’s take a look at the control room. You’re gonna get cozy with it the next twenty days and you won’t have any opportunities to change the color of the drapes, so make sure you like it now.”

“I’m sure it’s rad,” said Darcy. “And once I figure out where to put our espresso machine every morning, we’re golden.”

*

For the next twenty Fourth of Julys, Bruce spent more and more time at the work site. By the time he got there in the mornings, Tony was already there in his armor and the regiments from Fort Hamilton were just arriving, setting up the perimeter. They still didn’t have all of the materials arrivals down to a fine art, though most of the equipment they needed got there by noon.

The arc reactor was a clean source of energy, so they didn’t have to worry about nuclear waste and radiation. Unlike other nuclear reactors, they didn’t need a containment building—if they had, they certainly wouldn’t have been able to even think about building the reactor in the time available. A whole lot of large equipment still had to be brought into the site: boiler pumps, electric and steam generators, turbines, condensers.

A lot of large equipment also had to be made on the spot because pre-existing equipment didn’t exist: the core itself, the cooling system, the neutron moderator, the neutron howitzer, and control rods—all of it based on Tony’s arc reactor design. This required a lot metal, cranes, forklifts, welding robots, pretty much all of Tony’s robots—or at least, the ones that could be moved in reasonable amounts of time—and large construction crews.

They also had to bring the fuel every time: palladium, which had to be quickly melted and reformed into wires so that the vibranium synthesis could begin, but also plenty of other raw material for the reactor itself: all the water, coolant, gas, and various metals for intricate parts of the reactor.

The control room was a little admin office at the corner of the field, where Bruce could get started early and Jane could join him later. By the time Natasha would drop Bruce at the site, Rowe and Diego—two S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists—were already working on S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue (Stark) laptops. Bruce wasn’t sure where they were coming from to get there so early, but they were great guys, and within the hour, Gail and Anand joined in.

By eleven, there was a team of five S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists, four experts from R&D of various corporations (three Stark Industries and one Weyland-Yutani), and one professor from NYU, Bruce, and Jane in the control room. Darcy had dubbed herself Intern Coordinator. The scientists weren’t interns, and probably would have disdained to be called such had they cared. There were, however, another eighteen scientists besides Tony monitoring construction outside, besides plenty of technicians and a whole team of runners responsible for relaying messages.

The runners didn’t run so much as memorize phone numbers; all the people working together who hadn’t known each other before couldn’t program each other into each others’ phones in a way that would last day-to-day, which proved a burden to communications. There was a set of a hundred walkie talkies from Fort Hamilton, another hundred from a security company, and three hundred more from various museums, stadiums, and factories around New York, but the chatter was such that essential messages had to be delegated to phone or verbal communication.

At first, Bruce doubted Darcy’s “intern” management abilities, but he wasn’t paying much attention. Though with T’Challa’s help, they now had the necessary vibranium, there was still a lot on the technical end to be worked out each day, and they were still trying to trim the schedule. The computers had to monitor the Z pinch on the palladium every morning while Tony worked with Thor to direct the lightening, synthesizing the vibranium. For the reactor, all calibration, generators, coolant release and pressure systems were being run remotely by JARVIS through the computers in control.

Once Jane got there, they went to work on the Flux Accelerator. Tony had someone doing the vacuum chamber construction he had done that first day, but Bruce still had to program the perforation of the plates for the Casimir system, the nanobots for the energy channels, and the Chitauri navigation system for use by the Flux Accelerator.

Bruce and the other scientists fell into a sort of pattern. They were able to complete what they needed to in the day; it was the gross mechanics that were still taking too long. As they went through the motions of what would be needed once they finally got building the reactor up to speed, they did what they could to streamline the vibranium synthesis, the reactor itself, and the Flux Accelerator.

Meanwhile, Darcy turned out to be a wizard with the interns, whipping them into an efficient team. They could do anything the scientists needed if something went wrong, and they got really good at communicating what was going on in the field if it impacted what the scientists were doing. There was even one intern, Chelsea, who did a fabulous Tony impression, and used it whenever Iron Man needed to pass something down the line to Bruce or Jane.

Only rarely did Bruce get a chance to step out of the control room, and see what was happening out on the field. Every time, it took his breath away.

President Obama hadn’t come to the site, but only because the motorcade would clog up all the traffic coming on and off the site, and even on a helicopter, he’d cause too much distraction. The project, however, had the full support of the U.S. government, not to mention the United Nations and S.H.I.E.L.D. Several other countries were also working on solutions, and Bruce regretted that the lack of coordination was almost a necessity.

Several engineering experts from other countries managed to get special flights in every day, but in many areas managing the chaos of travel was impossible. From some other locations, it was impossible to reach New York within twenty-four hours.

Still, the number of people coordinating both on the ground and in the air at Floyd Bennett was overwhelming. While many of the teams working on specific parts of the reactor still didn’t have intimate knowledge of the entire design, pieces such as Janet’s schedule were posted online for all to see. According to Janet’s numbers, there were almost eighty thousand individuals associated with the project, and although not every single one of them came through the airfield, quite a few of them did.

Sometimes Bruce went outside, saw the cranes, trucks, helicopters, sheets of metal, sparks of iron, robots, tanks of gas and people, people upon people upone people, and felt something that he thought must be just a little bit like faith. This was what some people felt when they saw a sky full of stars, when they saw a forest suffused with mist, when they saw horses running in a field or flowers blooming in the wake of snow. They believed in a power that planned and created, that knew what beauty was and made it happen, a force that was almost unknowable in terms of its awesome potential. Sometimes Bruce felt like he believed in that force; the only difference was the word he used for it was man.

There were other times, though, when Bruce saw it all and thought about how easy it would be to stop it all. He could do it with several swipes of his big green fists. The world was such a fragile place, and here they were trying so desperately to restore the delicate balance of this thing called time, and sometimes Bruce just thought they’d all be better off without. He didn’t know why all of it mattered so much, why they all cared so much.

Bruce had walked for days, once, in the wilderness in the north of Greenland. He’d thought it was hilarious, because of the name, and he’d walked and walked and walked. He’d walked until he couldn’t feel his feet, his hands, his nose, his tongue, because if they all fell off, it wouldn’t matter. If he Hulked out, it wouldn’t matter. The world was nothing but white, and it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter at all.

*

Bruce had been working at the site for twenty days when the real breakthrough happened. They were getting closer and closer to following the schedule, with only at most a ten minute bubble now and again. The schedule, however, still broke even at over thirty hours. Neither Tony nor any of the other scientists seemed able to make construction tighter, until Janet put Tony, Bruce, and Jane in touch with a scientist named Enrique Pym.

“He’s sort of a dork,” Janet warned. “He just stands there at parties.”

Bruce swallowed hard. “You know Enrique Pym?”

“Hold on,” Tony murmured. “Should we get you a condom?”

“Honey,” Janet said. “I know Dolce and Gabana.”

Jane said, “Who are Dolc—”

“You hurt my soul.” Janet managed to look stricken. “I’ll just pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Enrique Pym,” said Bruce.

“I thought he moved to Czechoslovakia,” said Tony.

“Hungry,” Bruce murmured. “Also, there is no Czechoslovakia.”

Tony waved a hand. “One of those places.”

“I dunno. He’s like, forty or something.” Janet must have been over thirty. “He and Dad are BFFs. Anywhoodle, he says he has an idea, but you should know he always has ideas. A lot of it is just totally whacksadaisical.”

“Doctor Pym is a genius.” Bruce could feel his voice going wooden.

“Careful,” Tony told Janet. “That’s his boyfriend you’re talking about.”

“If I could have sex with Pym particles, I would,” said Jane.

“I thought they didn’t exist?” said Janet.

“Also, they’d be really small,” said Tony.

“I don’t care about size,” said Jane.

Tony turned a very innocent face on Bruce. “She doesn’t care about size.” Turning back to Jane, he went on, “How do you feel about color?”

“They exist in theory,” said Bruce. “Pym particles.”

“Jane’s kind of an autumn,” said Janet. “Burgandy, ochre, muted sage.”

“How ‘bout me,” said Tony, “can I wear autumn? Can I drape it all over me?”

“You’re more like a winter,” said Janet.

“How ‘bout green,” said Tony. “Bright green. A sort of radioactive—”

“When do we get to talk to Pym?” Bruce asked.

“Oh,” said Janet. “I’ve got him on Skype.”

“He’s waiting?” Bruce said, appalled.

“Why?” Janet had this great smile, her cheeks all bunched up. “You wanna let him talk at you? Because that’s what he’s gonna do.” She put her head to one side. “I sort of think Enrique’s a spring. Or an oatmeal. He’s definitely an oatmeal. Just sort of blah all over.”

“Janet,” said Bruce.

“Alright already,” said Janet, and tapped a key on the laptop.

Bruce had first become aware of Doctor Enrique Pym when he was in grad school. Pym had been in grad school also, on the other side of the country, and he was just about the only living scientist—besides Ho Yinsin, possibly—whose existence Bruce had bothered to acknowledge. Most of the other guys were hacks, and even if Bruce had admired Yinsin he’d also thought the guy was wasting his talents. That was back when Bruce was working on gamma bombs, and Yinsin’s pacifism had seemed like a real hindrance to the pursuit of scientific discovery. It was own fault he had faded into the obscurity after his Nobel, Bruce had thought.

At the time Pym was publishing papers left and right. Everyone had already theorized about the existence of supersymmetry particles—sparticles, gravitons, the Higgs boson—but at the age of twenty-eight, Pym had asserted a completely new Theory of Everything. He’d tossed out string theory and m-theory and quantum loop gravity, tying general relativity and quantum mechanics with a neat little bow that finally explained gravity. The entire thing hinged, however, on the existence of a hypothetical particle whose existence as yet could not be proven.

All the scientists who had been in a tizzy looking for the Higgs boson went into a new tizzy looking for Pym particles. Their possibilities were probably the final straw in getting the Large Hadron Collider built.

Bruce had thought Pym was a hack just like all the others; the difference was that Pym was actual competition. Bruce wasn’t publishing papers; unlike his father, he wasn’t really interested in fame or recognition. He hadn’t really given a shit what the scientific community thought of him—mostly because he didn’t really trust the scientific community to understand what he was doing anyway. Dad had always been light years beyond his colleagues and never once got acknowledgement for it. Bruce was light years beyond Dad, so he didn’t expect much out of anyone. He didn’t care. They were all so stupid anyway.

Getting there first did matter to Bruce, though. He honestly had believed that he could change the world with science. He could make the world better. Betty used to be one of those grad students who went to protest rallies, one of those sorts who cared about the feminist agenda, being green, hugging trees, ending diseases in the third world. All that hippie bullshit, and he’d wanted to show her that all of that was just so small, so unimportant; you could change the world in bigger ways if you remade the whole cloth, instead of wasting your time pulling threads around the edges.

It would have kind of defeated Bruce’s purpose, though, if Pym got there first.

As the years went on, Pym kept publishing, but Pym particles had yet to be found. Pym fell deeper and deeper in love with his own theories, to the point where he kind of got a mad scientist reputation. Bruce had heard rumors about Pym trolling other scientists who were still chipping hard away at m-theory and the like, Pym claiming that that his Theory of Everything was the one true theory.

After Bruce had turned into the Hulk, he’d sort of stopped paying attention. Pym himself had seemed to dissipate into the same kind of obscurity Doctor Yinsin once had, though as far as Bruce knew Pym was still utterly convinced of his own genius. With the confirmation of the Higgs boson just recently, there’d been a little buzz about the Pym particle, but most of the community was over it by now. No one expected to actually find Pym particles. The theory, however—everyone agreed—was still beautiful.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Tony gave Enrique, whose face was on the monitor, a bored look. “Theory, very pretty, who cares?”

“Tony.” Bruce’s voice was pained.

Tony turned to him. “Nerd.” He waited, as though expecting a retort. When Bruce didn’t supply one, something flickered in his eyes, and he turned back to Enrique. “We’re very impressed,” he said, his tone either reassuring or conciliatory, Bruce couldn’t tell. “I’ll subscribe to all your journals. Promise. I just like things to have relevance now and again.” Sniffing, he scratched the glowing spot on his chest. “You know. Just for flavor.”

“I really like what you said about the AdS/CTF correspondence,” Jane told Enrique. “Although I’d say m-theory has a pretty good example when you take the product-space of a four dimensional Anti de Sitter space on a seven sphere. You can describe it with the ABJM superconformal field theory in—”

“Jane, keep your filthy mind out of the gutter,” Tony said. “Work time now, play time later.”

“He’s not a super patient individual,” Bruce said, by way of explanation.

Enrique had dark eyes, dark hair, and a very boy-next-door kind of face, which right now looked pretty confused. “Is it always like this?” he asked.

“No,” said Tony. “Sometimes we bend the fabric of space-time. Other times we go swimming.”

“Pretty much,” said Bruce.

“I’m still stuck on the QCD strings,” said Jane. “You’d have gauge bosons—gluons—and some degree of freedoms, so if you could describe the gravitational system as two separate regions in a decoupling limit—” She stopped when Tony snapped her fingers in front of her face. “What?”

“Um,” said Enrique. “All I was really thinking was you could shrink the plasma.”

“Oh. Is that all.” Tony licked his lips.

“Well,” said Bruce, “technically it’s—”

“Sure,” said Enrique. “That’s what they all say. But technically since Pym particles exist you’d just have to—” he pinched his fingers, twisted them, “tweak ‘em a bit to exponentially expand the rate gravity collapses and fusion causes it to expand.”

Bruce shook his head. “If you condense—”

“Not condense,” said Enrique. “Shrink. Like a shirt in the wash, except no, because actually that’s condensing; I’m not talking about bringing the fibers—if you will—closer together; or the fibers that make up the fibers closer together, I’m talking about shrinking them, with all the fibers the exact same distance apart in relation to each other.”

Tony crossed his arms over his chest. “Impossible.”

Enrique nodded, looking unperturbed. “Good to know.”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “I think what Tony means to say is that you can’t make an atom smaller without changing its mass.”

“Well,” said Enrique. “It’s also impossible to generate carbon fullerenes out of thin air just because the PNT bonds holding your molecules together undergo a little Compton scattering.” He’d just described the process of Hulking out, and he shrugged as though it was nothing. “And why the green? But I don’t notice anyone denying that it happens.”

“When you put it that way,” said Jane, “there’s Mjölnir. And the Tesseract. Not to mention the Rainbow Bridge and this whole repeating day thing. Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask—can Loki really teleport?”

“Teleportation.” Enrique threw up his hands. “How come we haven’t invented that yet? I knew I was forgetting something. Oh yeah, and the Vulcan mindmeld. You know, some insects have—”

“Okay.” Tony uncrossed his arms.

“No, really,” Enrique said. “Like bees, or ants, or—”

Tony turned to Bruce. “Make it stop.”

Bruce said, “What—”

Swiveling back to Enrique’s face, Tony said, “I said okay. We’ll try it. But just once,” he went on. “We don’t have much time for experimentation.”

“Oh!” Enrique didn’t look concerned. “Well, it’s easy because it’s fusion. You could just try it on that arc reactor right there in your chest. What I really want to do is find a way to do it without those kinds of energy level. You know, like some kind of serum or—hey, Doctor Banner, you did some work on like a—what was it? Some kind of gamma serum; wasn’t that how you made—”

Tony’s hand shot out, covering Bruce’s hands, which were moving over each other. Not even looking at Bruce, Tony said to Enrique, “Tell us how you think it’s gonna work, and we’ll get back to you.”

“Sure,” said Enrique.

*

On the thirty-seventh Fourth of July, Tony tried Enrique Pym’s suggestion using an arc reactor from the Iron Man armor, and it worked.

The experiment should have proven the existence of Pym particles, but despite its success, it was difficult to say what was actually going on. The true miracle was happening in the center of the reactor at speeds impossible to observe or record. The experiment did, however, reduce the amount of work that needed to be done to generate the same amount of energy. When Janet retooled the schedule with all the adjustments Tony, Jane, Bruce and the other scientists supplied, it squeaked in at just over twenty-three hours.

On the thirty-eighth Fourth of July, a new kind of energy suffused the work site. Janet, Pepper, Steve, Darcy, and Sue Potts spread the message far and wide that building the reactor was now achievable. With the adjustments to the schedule, they only needed to practice building fast enough to complete the reactor in time. Because Pym's adjustments didn't introduce radical changes to gross mechanics, they already had a significant amount of practice under their belts. Pepper predicted that, according to the rate of speed-increase since Day Fourteen at the reactor, they would achieve fast enough fabrication eight days from now.

On the the thirty-ninth Fourth of July, they were still two hours off schedule by the time the day reset. On the fortieth Fourth of July, they were one hour and forty-seven minutes off schedule. On the forty-first Fourth of July, they were one hour and twenty-six minutes off schedule. On the forty-second Fourth of July, Bruce got shot in the head.

Chapter Text

On the forty-second Fourth of July, Bruce was in the control room, working with the other scientists and a couple of the techs. Since Enrique Pym’s contribution, they’d had to rework parts certain parts of fabrication, which meant Janet had to retool the entire schedule. She had some pretty nifty software to help do the job, but it also meant that everyone had to adjust to a new timeline. Pepper went back to the play analogy: it was like everyone learning new entrances.

Still, there was a buzz. Now that the schedule was (theoretically) possible to complete in twenty-four hours, everyone had renewed hope. Bruce tried not to think about hope or whether it would work, instead trying to focus on getting his part of the project done fast enough.

He’d just got done programming the nanobots and was about to go on to the Chitauri crystals, when he turned to find one of Darcy’s interns pointing a gun at his head. “Hey there,” said Bruce.

The guy holding the gun had large, clear blue eyes, and pale skin. His hair was brown and floppy; he was tall; he seemed so young. His body was shaking all over. He’d been coming to the site since Day Eighteen, so Bruce recognized him. His name was Dave.

“Could you put that away?” Bruce’s hands weren’t moving at all. “I don’t much like guns.”

“I know who you are,” Dave said, his voice thin, somewhat reedy.

Bruce looked around the rest of the control room. Jane was the only one looking at the gun, but her hand was on Anand’s arm, and the others were beginning to look. The S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists were most likely trained for extreme circumstances, but not all of them were S.H.I.E.L.D., and right now Dave had the upper hand. “If you know who I am,” Bruce said, turning back to Dave, “then you probably know you don’t want to use that.”

“It’s why I’m going to shoot you,” said Dave.

“That’s a twist.” Bruce smiled wryly. “Why?”

“Because,” said Dave, “has it ever occurred to you—” he waved the gun, and someone took a sharp breath—“has it ever occurred to you Avengers that maybe we don’t need to stop it?”

“You mean the time loop?”

“What the fuck do you think I mean?”

“It occurs to me. Every time the day repeats.” Putting his hands in his pockets, Bruce took a step forward. “Why don’t you—”

“Don’t come any closer!”

Bruce raised his brows. “You know I’m not afraid of that,” he said, nodding at the gun.

“I don’t care,” said Dave. “The Hulk’s going to take down the reactor. Anything you and your alien robot friends try and build; we’ll come in and take it down. You think you’re the only one who wants to be immortal?”

“It doesn’t actually work like that,” Bruce said mildly.

“You think that we can’t stop you?” Dave adjusted his grip on the gun, hands still shaking. “You probably caused this!”

“I think you don’t really want to commit murder,” said Bruce.

“It’s just one day,” said Dave. “And you can’t die.”

“They can.” Bruce glanced at the scientists. There were twelve of them—one tech, eleven scientists, five of them S.H.I.E.L.D. Some of them were wide-eyed with terror, others obviously attempting to use their training, looking for a way to help. Jane was very still. “I’ll rip them apart,” said Bruce, turning back. “I can break a person’s spine like the stem of a dead leaf, and I will. Now, if you imagine jumping into a pile of dead leaves. That’s what the Hulk is like. You don’t want that on you, Dave. You don’t want it on your hands. It gets—wet and sort of pulpy, at the bottom of that pile.”

Dave almost wavered—almost, but as he looked at the scientists, Bruce took a step. The movement must have caught Dave’s eye, because he whirled, gun dead center on Bruce’s brow. Baring his teeth, Dave held steady, cords on his neck tight. “You can’t threaten me.”

“It’s not a threat so much as me letting you know what to expect,” Bruce said. “Afterward, it doesn’t even matter if they’re alive or not. What matters is you close your eyes and you can see it. All the blood. Have you ever put your hand in that much blood?”

Sweat beaded on Dave’s upper lip. His red tongue flicked out to wipe it, and again, the gun almost dipped. “You can’t—”

“Dave,” Bruce said gently, “it’s just like warm jam. You never forget how it feels, how it looks when they’re crushed the way that I crush them. Have you ever seen a squirrel get run over by a car, how far its brains can smear across the—”

Then the door opened.

Dave was standing with his back to it, but he heard the latch, the swing of the blinds against the window. He whirled, and Darcy stood there for a second with her mouth open before lunging.

“Darcy—” that was Jane—“dammit, no—”

And for a moment, Bruce thought, I could let her die; it would only be for the day, and it would be better than all the—

All the dead leaves, jam, and—

So Bruce took a deep breath and stepped in so that he filled the space between Darcy and the gun faster than Jane could. Bruce couldn’t risk getting the gun away without causing Dave to jerk and reflexively press the trigger, so instead he pushed his forehead right against the barrel, and said, “You’re not the killer here.”

Dave’s panicked eyes slid down and Darcy was on the floor with a bag, digging something out. Bruce realized that the story about Darcy and Thor and the Taser was all true, and that broke his heart somehow, because Jane was grabbing it from Darcy and lunging, and it was the wrong thing to do, so completely wrong.

Bruce looked at Dave, his clear blue eyes, and said, “It’s not your fault.”

Dave fired the gun.

*

Getting shot in the head was a strange experience, but Bruce had felt it all before. He could feel the impact in his skull; he felt the bullet in his brain; he felt I don’t want to hurt anyone, and what the hell was I thinking, and oh dear God, not again, and then he felt nothing.

And then he felt rage.

Contrary to popular belief, the Hulk was completely capable of complex or even abstract thought. In fact, it made him even more angry, since he seemed to be completely incapable of articulating said thoughts, much less acting on them.

Bruce had never really tried explaining this, because what was the point, but the thing that made the Hulk angriest was being angry. He hated how it just kept coming and wouldn’t stop. He hated how eventually it would stop and then he’d have to see the things he’d done.

It was impossible to explain why Dave had to suffer, why the computer and the control room had to suffer, why the coolant tanks, generators, boilers and the field itself had to suffer. Instead of flipping over the crane, Bruce could have torn his own skin to shreds; instead of throwing around military issue vehicles, he could have ripped himself limb from limb. If he could have he would have pulled himself apart; he would have smeared his insides all across the park, but that would not have been ugly enough; that would not have been cruel enough. He wanted them to know his ugliness; he wanted them to taste it. He wanted to ram it down their throats.

When Iron Man appeared, Bruce hated him. He hated him, because of course Tony was here to fight him. Tony was good, heroic, and even kind, and that was what heroes did: they fought bad guys. Bruce wanted to smash him underfoot and hear the crunch.

Then Captain America was there, and Bruce really hated him. Tony he hated because he really sort of liked him, but Captain America Bruce hated because he really just hated hated hated him. At least Bruce understood Tony. Steve, on the other hand, was completely incomprehensible. Bad just kept going in that man, but only good came out; it was a fucked up system, some sort of black box equipment, wires in Cap’s brain that were different than Bruce’s, and better.

By the time Thor got there Bruce really just thought the Avengers were in the way.

If the Hulk could die—not just the Hulk, but if Bruce could die—then all of this would stop. This was what immortality brought you; this was what happened when there were no consequences. If no one could ever stop you, you became a creature without reason; you became a monster of base impulses. All the thought and logic and abstract sense of purpose couldn’t save you.

This was what would happen to the world, Bruce thought much later. Once all of them died and woke up the next day and kept dying and living and dying and living the same day over and over again—then the shells of reason and civility would eventually crack and shed, revealing the seething mass of nerves beneath.

Fear of death was why humans loved each other, protected each other, built societies and contracts. Once all of us killed each other and found that even death had been stripped away, there would be nothing left but rage.

*

When Bruce came to, Natasha was slapping his face. “Good, you’re awake,” she said.

“Ow,” said Bruce.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” said Natasha. “Come on.”

Somehow she pulled him up into a sitting position, got his arm around her neck. Bruce looked around, saw that there was fire everywhere and that the street was broken into pieces. Struggling, he stood, and found he had to put his weight on her a little if he was to stay upright.

“This way,” Natasha said. One of her arms was around his back, the other hand was on his stomach, steadying him. His bare stomach, because he was naked, Bruce realized.

Again. He really should be past the point of embarrassment.

“In here,” Natasha said. She broke the door open—it was some kind of shop—and he limped along beside her until she got them behind a counter. Then she let him go. Steadying himself on the counter, he watched as she broke open another door—a kind of closet behind the cashier station. “Get in,” she said, and then put her arm around him again. She helped him in, then said, “Stay here.” She closed the door, and was gone.

Bruce looked around. It looked like a break room. Manager’s office, maybe. It had a couch, a desk, and a safe, but it wasn’t much bigger than one of Tony’s walk-in closets. Which was really pretty big, actually.

Steadying himself on the wall, Bruce poked his head out of the door and looked around again. It was a hardware shop. He didn’t recognize it—didn’t know which part of town he was in. Whether he was even still in Brooklyn. No one was in the shop. Maybe no one saw the point of opening a hardware shop on the forty-second Fourth of July in a row. Maybe it was closed for the Fourth of July. Or maybe it was closed because he’d flattened Brooklyn.

Bruce closed the door, then slid down it to the ground. Scrubbing his hand over his face, he tried to remember what had happened.

Dave.

Bruce tried really hard, for several moments, to blame Dave. Stuck inside a repeating day with no real rational explanation as to why—it must seem like an act of God. A once in a lifetime—all of your lifetime—chance to rein supreme over the laws of physics. At the very least, an opportunity to read the collected works of Gabriel García Márquez.

Bruce had always meant to read García Márquez; he just hadn’t quite gotten around to it yet. If he wasn’t trying to fix this thing, that was what he’d be doing. Right now.

Maybe some Heinlein. Harlan Ellison. Philip K. Dick, all that guilty pleasure stuff.

It was also impossible to blame Dave for thinking the Avengers were responsible for the time loop. For one thing, if Bruce had been any kind of normal, he’d suspect the Avengers were behind the repeating day, too. After all, they kind of were. And before this, the Chitauri attack was the craziest thing to ever happen to the planet, and the Avengers had been at the center of that, too.

So Dave had shot him and then Bruce had died and the other guy had “saved him”—yeah, Tony, thanks—and then the Hulk had—

Jesus Christ. Tony. Steve, and Jane and Darcy had been there, and Tony and Steve could probably handle themselves, but if Jane—

If Darcy—

Jesus Christ.

*

Bruce was thunking his head against the door when Natasha came back. “Sorry,” he said, trying to get out of the way so she could open it. He lurched a little as he stood, and she caught him again.

“Here,” she said, when he was steady.

He looked down at her hands, in which she held what looked suspiciously like a pair of pants and a shirt. “Thanks,” he said, taking the clothes. She’d also gotten him candy bars.

“No problem,” she said, and turned away. Slipping her phone out of her pocket, she started touching the screen.

Bruce got dressed. The clothes weren’t his, and didn’t fit very well, but they did the job. There weren’t any shoes. Nor any underwear. He said, “Can you tell me whether I—”

“You should eat.” Natasha turned back around, putting the phone away.

“Okay,” said Bruce. “But first can you tell me whether I . . .” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Whether I killed Jane or Darcy, because I’d really rather start trying to—”

“Bruce.” Two little lines appeared between her brows. “You didn’t kill Jane or Darcy. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“What about Dave?”

“Dave?”

“The guy who shot me.”

Natasha inclined her head. “He died.”

“Yeah.” Bruce swallowed a grimace. “Who else died?”

“Doctor Chiang.” That was Gail. “And another—you didn’t kill them. It was cross-fire.”

“You know what else is cross-fire.” Bruce started unwrapping the candybar.

Natasha’s mouth tightened.

“Say it.”

“What happened?” she said, instead of war.

“I got shot,” Bruce said, and took a bite of the candy bar.

“You’re a dick when you get angry.”

“What are you going for?” Bruce swallowed the rest of the bite. “Understatement of the century? How’s Steve?”

“Rogers is fine. Why? You think you killed him too?”

“I wouldn’t put it past me.” Bruce put the candy bar down. Feeling sick to his stomach, he sank down onto the edge of the desk.

He could feel her standing there, and strangely, it did not feel like hesitation, the way people usually felt when he was like this. Then she came closer, and reached out a hand.

“Don’t touch me,” Bruce said, and she touched him.

Her hand was on his cheek, in his hair.

“Don’t.” He wrapped his hand around her wrist, and simply didn’t have the strength of character to pull her hand away.

She did it herself, her hand sliding against his palm, then out of contact. She didn’t step away. “Cap wanted to help you,” she said. “Stark did too.”

Bruce desperately wanted her hand back. The feeling of nausea intensified.

“You didn’t hurt them, Bruce.”

“I fought them.” Bruce looked up. “I remember them being there.”

“You didn’t fight them. You ran away.”

Bruce looked at her. When he’d been twelve, he’d liked her. He’d loved her, even—at least, he’d really cared for her, but it had partially been because she’d never looked worried or afraid or annoyed. She’d just been a blank. A warm, soft, comforting blank who would always be there and always protect him.

He’d gotten to know her better, and now he was his normal age. He should be able to find it—find something, some hint of pity, fear, disgust. Kindness. There was nothing.

Bruce had never met another person who could give him that.

Natasha moved away. Bruce looked down at the desk, picked up the candy bar, and started eating.

Natasha went over to the door, opening it to poke her head out, presumably to check for any visitors. “Where did you get shot?” she asked, when he couldn’t see her face.

“Usual place,” said Bruce.

Pulling her head back out, she shut the door. Leaning against it for a moment, she scanned him with her eyes. “Did it hurt?” she asked finally.

Bruce couldn’t stop his lips from twisting. “Getting shot?”

“Yes.”

He thought about lying to her, but was fairly certain that she could tell. Instead, he found a trashcan and threw the candy wrapper away. “Yeah. Yeah, Natasha, it hurts. Pretty much every time.”

She held his eyes. “Maybe we can work on that next time we spar.”

“Work on dying?”

“Sure. If you can learn to fall without getting hurt maybe you can learn to die without getting hurt.”

“You’re joking,” he said, incredulous.

She didn’t change expression. “Yes.”

“Oh. Do you know you’re supposed to smile?”

“I’ve been told.” Her expression remained flat as ever. “Can I look at it?”

“What?”

“Where the bullet went in.”

Bruce gave her a small smile, not quite a nice one. “You’re looking at it right now.”

Her gaze rose from his eyes to his forehead and stayed there for a long moment. “I know you don’t like him,” she said, “but he has his advantages.”

She didn’t really look much worse for wear; she was in that tight uniform and there didn’t seem to be any holes or scratches in it. Her hair was a little tousled, but that only made her look more pretty. Bruce looked away. He felt exhausted. “Why are you here, Natasha?”

“Stark is looking for you. Do you want him?”

“No.” Bruce scrubbed his face with the back of his hand. “God, no.”

“Have another candy bar,” said Natasha.

Taking his hand away from his face, he looked at the candy, then back at her. “Next you’re going to tell me I need to get some sleep.”

Brows rising, she said, “Probably.”

Bruce shook his head. “You don’t have to do this.”

She gave him this look, like he was incredibly stupid. “You’re incredibly stupid,” she said.

Bruce pressed his lips together. “Maybe I don’t want you to do this.”

“Then I guess you’re screwed.” She turned around to look out the door again. “Eat your Snickers, Bruce.”

“Natasha.”

Natasha shut the door and pulled out her phone. “I’ve got us a helicopter. Where do you wanna go?”

“Natasha.”

“When I first got out of Moscow there were at least fifteen assassins hired to kill me.”

Bruce’s breath caught. Natasha was still just looking at her phone.

“At least six of them were hired by my father,” she went on, “and whenever one of them tried to make a move, Clint was there. I killed each one in under two minutes on discovery, and Clint just kept showing up. Like a bad taste, every time you swallow.”

“Natasha,” Bruce said, as gently as he could, “you can’t pay him back by . . . championing me.”

“I’m never going to pay him back.” Natasha looked up from her phone. “You owe me.”

Bruce was so surprised, he said, “What?”

“For the helicarrier.”

I said I was sorry, Bruce thought wildly—not because it made any sense, but because she had it all backwards. Her taking care of him wasn’t exactly compensation for trying to kill her in the middle of a battle. “You have a funny idea of debt,” was all he said.

“Russian economics.” Going back to her phone, she went on, “What do you want? Stark Tower, your apartment. Or—you wanna go to Cap’s place? He’s not there, but . . .” She shrugged. “I pick locks.”

Bruce had started sparring with her about six weeks before the day began repeating. They did it on the second story of a tea shop in Brooklyn. The studio was a dancing school run by a lady named Miss Honey Li, a middle aged dancer who didn’t seem to smile a lot, but smiled at Natasha. The floors were dark wood, the walls mostly mirrors, but deep red in the places between.

Natasha never turned on all the lights. It was just the two of them, and all the lights at once were glaring. The mats were thin and black. Sometimes he got there hours early and had the tea below; you could hear the thump clack thump of tiny tap dancers up above.

Bruce looked at Natasha and thought, let’s just get frozen yogurt. “Stark Tower,” he said instead.

“Okay.” Taking a gun out of her coat pocket, she held it up, and opened the door again. After looking out, she said, “Stay behind me.”

Bruce didn’t move. “What’s going on out there?”

“Chaos and destruction. That sort of thing.”

“Is it because of me?”

Pressing her lips together, Natasha tilted her head. “Yes.”

Bruce came up behind her, trying to get close enough for cover, but not too close for comfort. She opened the door, and they went outside.

There was a burning car, and Bruce didn’t know whether it was something the Hulk had done, or whether it was due to whatever Natasha was being so careful about now. There was a gang of looters down the street with baseball bats and kitchen knives; someone was screaming in one of the buildings close by. Bruce thought about that actor Janet and Darcy had mentioned a while ago, the one that some people had decided to kill because one of his movies was too much like what was happening now.

The reactor may have given people hope, but hope was a fragile thing. It didn’t seem too far-fetched that the Hulk destroying the reactor had tipped a scale in people’s minds, catapulting the tentative peace in the streets into riots and terrified mobs. Although they always had to start over again each morning, today was even more of a waste. They were no closer to their goal; it was a scratch completely. Apparently people had decided that effort was useless, and this was the result.

Down the street five cars were smashed in an inextricable mess, and there was smoke in the distance. “Don’t do anything,” Natasha whispered, and then Bruce saw the man with the shotgun.

He was standing in the doorway of a costume shop, the butt of the gun wedged up against one arm and his hand on the trigger, head angled to site the gun while the barrel pointed straight at Natasha. He looked to be in his late sixties—tall, a little scraggly, wearing an old coat and about nine days worth of beard. He stood ten yards away.

By the time Bruce had registered his presence, Natasha had shoved her gun into her thigh holster, lifted her arms, and said, “Oh my God! Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!” Then she jogged right toward the shotgun.

Bruce wanted to stop her, but he’d never actually been that quick on his feet. He was about as shocked when he didn’t hear a shot ring out as he would have been had one been fired, and Natasha said, “Oh my God, help us please, those guys are crazy!”

“Don’t come any closer,” said the man.

“Those whackjobs stole our car,” said Natasha. “They totally—” she turned back to Bruce, “oh my God, Andre, don’t just stand there; do something!” Bruce just stood there, and Natasha turned back to the gun. “Can you help us, please?”

“What’re you doing out here?” The man scowled, and lowered his gun a little. “It’s dangerous.”

Bruce actually didn’t know how she was doing it. For one thing, there was her uniform, which did not look at all like something a civilian would wear. For another, she had been carrying a gun when they’d first seen the guy—and yet, if Bruce hadn’t known better, he’d have believed her too.

Natasha kept on creeping closer. “My boyfriend and me—well, it’s so stupid, but we were totally out of groceries when this thing started, and you know all the stores are closed, so it’s always hard to—you know, and you can go a day without eating, but—you know, that gets old, so we were—and then there was that explosion, and that huge—”

And then Natasha was there, the barrel of the gun right in her face, and Bruce was so stupid; he was just standing there while she—then she simply grabbed the barrel and pulled, and jammed the butt in the guy’s chest. Then her leg was in the air and her foot was in his stomach and he was on the ground, and Natasha had the gun pointed right in the guy’s face.

“Don’t,” Bruce called out, and he didn’t like to run, but he was there anyway, at the entrance to the costume shop, where the guy lay on the pavement.

“I wasn’t going to.” Natasha moved the gun out of the guy’s face and emptied the magazine.

“Is he—”

“He’s fine. Hit his head.” Natasha turned around. “Come on.”

“He could have a concussion,” Bruce said.

“He doesn’t have a concussion.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know. Bruce, tomorrow he'll be—”

“He was just scared, Natasha,” Bruce said.

Natasha stared at him. Bruce started moving toward the guy on the ground, and she stepped between them. “Fine,” she said. “Hold this.” She held out the gun.

“Uh.” Bruce hesitated. “Okay.” He reached out.

She just looked at him again. “Never mind,” she said. Putting the gun on the ground, she put her knee on the stock, and looked over the man on the ground. “You okay?” she asked, and Bruce tried to look over her shoulder.

The guy blinked. “What the fuck?”

“I’m taking your pulse.”

The man groaned. “What?”

“Good. Follow my finger.” Natasha moved her finger back and forth in front of his face. The guy tried to sit up, and Natasha held him down.

“What the hell, you crazy b—”

“I guess he’s fine,” said Bruce.

“Oh, no, we have to check him all over,” Natasha said. “We have to get him a glass of water and a fluffy pillow and a bubble bath.”

“Let me go,” the guy said.

“I really think he’s fine,” said Bruce.

“But we don’t know how rare he takes his steak.” Natasha held him down with one hand while she checked the back of his head with another. Bruce didn’t even know how it was physically possible. She was really rather small. “What else can we do to make his pointing a gun at us more comfortable?”

“Get off me,” said the guy.

“I get it, Natasha,” Bruce said, in a low voice.

“I’m going to let you go,” Natasha told the guy. “You’re going to stay on the floor until you can’t see us anymore.”

“Um,” said Bruce, “and I guess you should stay inside, since Natasha’s probably going to take your bullets.”

Natasha glanced up. “It’s a shotgun, Bruce.”

“Oh yeah.” Bruce touched his knuckles. “Shells. Shot? The stuff you put in shotguns.”

The guy looked from Natasha to Bruce back to Natasha. “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

“Tomorrow’s only a day away.” Natasha stood up.

“You just quoted Orphan Annie,” Bruce pointed out, because her hair was red.

She’d told him that she’d killed her father.

Natasha grabbed the shotgun, and stood up. “Stay close to me,” was all she said.

Bruce stayed close to her, and they moved away from the costume shop.

When they were about three blocks away, she put the shotgun in a dumpster and took her handgun from her thigh.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said, and she moved back in front of him. “I should have believed you.”

“You wished I’d made friends first.” She glanced back. “Before knocking him out.”

“I realize it’s impractical.”

“We’re different.” Natasha smiled a little, but she didn’t look happy. “But you should know I try never to hurt anyone any more than what’s necessary to keep people safe.”

Something squeezed in Bruce’s chest. “I know. Natasha, I—”

“I like that you were concerned.” She smiled again, the corner of her mouth pushing in. “It’s good to be concerned. We should keep going. I took a loop because of that gang down the street; the helicopter’s only a block or two away.”

“Okay. I just have one question.”

She raised a brow.

“Who’s Andre?”

“Just some guy I knew,” she said. “Follow me.”

*

When they got to Stark Tower, it was deserted.

“You should just take some stuff out of Stark’s closet,” Natasha told Bruce, glancing at his second-hand clothes. “Bet he won’t even notice.”

“I’d rather not,” said Bruce.

“I’d be scared to go in Stark’s closet too,” said Natasha. “Those don’t fit right.”

“I’m fine.” They walked through the apartment, towards the kitchen. “Where is everyone?”

“Stark’s finding out where Dave Eston spend the night of July third,” Natasha said. “We’re going to have to find someone who restarts the day close enough to him to stop him in case he tries to do anything else.”

“It’s not his fault.”

Her brows rose. “You have a funny idea of taking responsibility,” she said, echoing his earlier words.

“He was scared.”

“So is everyone else. You don’t see them shooting you in the head.”

“Well, there was that guy with the shotgun.”

“He didn’t shoot you in the head. I was there.” Natasha was rummaging around the cupboards in the kitchen. The door to one of them was blocking her face.

“Hey.” Thumb moving over his fingers, Bruce came closer. “Hey, Natasha, it’s not your fault that—”

“Doesn’t Stark have any real food?”

“Natasha,” said Bruce. “It’s not your fault you weren’t there to stop Dave.”

“It’s his fault he shot you.” She pulled something out of the cupboard and smelled it. “What even is this?”

“He won’t even have done it by tomorrow,” said Bruce. “You can’t punish someone for something they haven’t done yet.”

“He did do it.” Scowling, she held out a can. “What is this? Is this Coke?”

“Tab.”

“Tab?” She frowned down at the soda. “What’s Tab?”

“Pop.”

The frown went away. “You just said pop.”

“Dave didn’t do it yet, Natasha. He was scared, and you know, seeing as how being around me is basically the equivalent of being around a bomb waiting to go off—”

“They’re not going to hurt him, Bruce. They just need to make sure they can stop him if he tries it again.” She sniffed something else from the cupboard. “Want some olives?”

“What about Steve?”

She tossed the thing she’d been smelling the trash. “What about him?”

“He doesn’t think we should go after Dave, does he?”

She pulled down a box of cereal, then moved onto the refrigerator. “He and Thor are finding out whether Dave had any buddies in any of the work crews.”

A stone slowly dropped in Bruce’s stomach, and settled at the bottom. “How are they finding that out?”

Natasha shrugged. “No idea,” she said, taking the milk out of the fridge. “Want some Captain Crunch?”

So Natasha had come to take care of him, and Tony had gone to stop the guy who’d shot him, and Steve and Thor had gone to make sure there wasn’t anyone else who could present a threat. They’d all fanned out like a neatly ordered phalanx who could take assault from any direction, with Bruce hidden in the center. Bruce scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ve got to . . . I’m gonna go work on the reactor design,” he said, half-expecting Natasha to protest.

“’Kay,” she said, and got out a spoon.

Twenty minutes later, she came into the lab with a bowl of Captain Crunch, grilled cheese with olives, and chocolate-covered goji berries. “I found these," she said, and gave him a pair of glasses. Bruce had no idea why there would be glasses in Stark Tower, particularly glasses that fit his far-sightedness exactly. He took them anyway. "The food around here sucks,” Natasha added, setting the tray on the holodesk. “I’m headed out.”

“Okay,” Bruce said. “Natasha?”

She turned around.

“Thanks,” Bruce said.

“Eat,” Natasha said, and left.

*

“Thor of Asgard has entered the Tower,” JARVIS said.

Bruce had put JARVIS on the alert. He didn’t know what he was going to say to Tony, Steve, or Thor when they arrived. He tried to imagine convincing them of anything, and couldn’t really do it. Thor in particular was an unknown variable, since Bruce still didn’t know him very well.

When Bruce found him, Thor was standing in Tony’s apartment, looking out the bank of windows out at New York City. “Banner,” he said, sensing Bruce’s presence. Thor turned around.

“Natasha told me what you were doing,” Bruce said.

Thor nodded. “I do not believe any of David Esten’s ilk will pose a threat to the work on the reactor.”

“Yeah.” Bruce’s thumb ran over his fingers. “Who’d you have to torture to find that out?”

Thor’s brow furrowed. “I tortured no one.”

“Bad choice of words.” Bruce swallowed a grimace. “Did you ever consider—did it ever even occur to any of you to consider that terrifying a bunch of innocent people who are out of their wits with fear isn’t—I’m the threat here.” Stepping closer, he jabbed himself in the chest with a finger. “Me. Not anyone else.”

Thor looked surprised. “You are angry with me?”

Bruce took a deep breath, then another. Then another. “Not you. I’m—what happened is my fault.”

“I fail to see how the assignation of blame plays any part in the tragedy that happened today.”

“It’s I who need to be taken out of the equation,” said Bruce. “Not them.”

“Ah.” For a moment, Thor looked thoughtful. “You do not think that David Esten, and the comrades who share his sentiments, would not find another way to compromise the project, were you not involved?”

“It would certainly make it harder.”

Thor looked out of the windows again. For a while, he was quiet. When he spoke, his tone was soft, almost pensive. “When I first came to Midgard, I found humans fragile, in need of protection. When I came again to defeat my brother and forestall the Chitauri invasion, I met you and others who proved some humans had the power to destroy immense foes.” He turned around, facing Bruce. “But it is only since this day began repeating that I learned a human’s greatest power lies in his capacity to destroy himself, and other humans. I have learned that when it comes to human life, there are few forces as destructive as a gun, Bruce Banner. I do not think even you compare.”

“I’m the biggest gun there is,” said Bruce.

“There is only one of you.”

Bruce scraped his nails over the skin of his knuckles, and said nothing.

“I did not torture anyone. Most compatriots of Esten were easily discovered.” Thor’s gaze was almost gentle, and suddenly, Bruce knew why Jane liked him. “I admire your wish that they not be harmed,” Thor said, “considering what was done to you.”

“Nothing was done to me.”

Thor raised his brows. “Jane supplied a different version of events.”

“Nothing can be done to him,” Bruce said. “Bullets slide off like butter.”

“You are speaking of the Hulk,” Thor said. “Jane would find it illogical that you blame yourself for a thing you could not help.”

“I could have helped it,” said Bruce. “I could have stayed dead.”

“One may choose to die.” Thor’s voice was heavy and deep. Everything he said sounded like it should have been written down somewhere. “He cannot choose to be born. He cannot choose the circumstances under which he enters this world—or returns to it.”

Bruce huffed an almost-laugh. “I could have chosen not to study gamma radiation. I could have chosen not to build bombs for the government, just like I could have chosen not to experiment on myself. I was never very good at making choices.”

“You cannot change the past.”

“I can sure as hell pay for it.” Bruce turned away. He was sort of done with this conversation.

“I know what it is to have another self,” said Thor, and Bruce stopped.

“I have watched that self attack the people that I love.” Thor’s jaw hardened for a moment, then went on. “I have seen his petty cruelty, his lack of concern for those who may be weak or frail; I have seen his ignorance, and known it as my own. I have watched him as he destroyed mortal cities, awash in human blood; I have seen him attempt to subjugate the Earth.”

Bruce raised his brows. “I—do you mean Loki? Because calling him your other self seems really far-fetched.” Thor’s expression didn’t change. “Unless there’s something I’m really not getting about your relationship with him.”

Thor looked at the floor. “Loki is the realization of mistakes I made in my youth.”

“Wow.” Bruce scratched the back of his neck. “Do you have any idea how arrogant that sounds?”

“Is it more so than yourself?”

“Okay, well, let me just put out there that Loki, however batshit, is his own person. He makes his own decisions.”

“Does he?” Thor looked up. “Can you be sure? Stark would have me believe that the human mind is nothing but a complex computer program, with circuits to determine every word an action. I believe that humans are more, just as immortals are, and yet I wonder—had Loki been programmed differently—had he been better understood, had his heritage been celebrated, instead of hidden from him in shame . . . had he not been raised in my shadow, would he have been a different man?”

Bruce had slammed Loki around like a rag doll, not ten feet from where he was standing. The floor had long since been fixed, but Bruce could still remember how it felt—the smash of impact each time Loki had hit the floor. It would have crushed the brains out of any mortal man, and Bruce could remember the frustration of the reverberations up Hulk’s arm, though so many things from that day were hazy. “I respect the fact that you’re asking that question,” said Bruce, “but I don’t really have any answers.”

“I don’t expect you to. It has merely come to my attention recently that you, among all mortals, are most likely to understand the . . .” Thor seemed to search for words. “The overwhelming burden of unleashing an alien strength on far too frail and vulnerable a world. To feel the responsibility of it, though you cannot control it—to know that if you could but erase all traces of yourself or any of your kind ever having been here, the world would be a better place.” His mouth curved in a bittersweet smile. “Our problems are colored the same,” he said.

That was . . . really great. At the top of the list of things Bruce really needed was to be likened to Loki, and the worst part was he couldn’t even blame Thor for drawing the comparison. “You’re not responsible for Loki,” Bruce said instead.

“Asgard is,” said Thor. “As is this repeating day.”

“The Tesseract made us conscious of it,” said Bruce, “but we still don’t know what caused it.”

Thor just gave him a look. “Have you any doubt that it was some form of magic?”

Science, thought Bruce, but didn’t correct him.

Thor shook his head. “My father seeks to determine what could cause such a shift against the grain of time.”

“He thinks it was Loki?” Bruce was curious in spite of himself.

“No.” Thor looked grim. “He believes himself to be the cause of it.”

“Your father?” Bruce asked, surprised.

“When he sent me to Midgard to fetch Loki and the Tesseract. The Rainbow Bridge was broken. My father had no alternative but to exert his power to hurl me hence.” Brow lowered, Thor pressed his lips together. “I remember Loki mocked me for it at that time. Despite all that I had learned on my first trip to Midgard, I thought nothing of it.”

“You think you traveling here—shifted us in time?”

Thor nodded. “Jane says she sees how it could be possible to change directions along the hœgr and not notice. If all processes speed up or slowed down, no one on Midgard would be aware of the difference.”

“Time is relative,” said Bruce.

“However, if you were to encounter a knot in the grain . . .”

“An obstacle in the time stream.”

“You speak as she does.” Thor’s smile was without mirth. “You see now how I can say that it is I who should have been removed from the equation—not yourself, or anyone on Midgard.”

“You’re a little too late for that.”

“Yes. Like you, I can only seek to redress the wrongs that have occurred due to my presence here.” For a moment, Thor looked down again. “I do not know whether that purpose is better served by remaining here, or taking myself as far away as possible.”

Bruce didn’t know what to say to him.

Thor smiled, a touch sardonically. “Nor can I decide whether it is cosmic humor, or simply irony, that today is what Midgardians call ‘Thor’s day.’”

After today, Bruce would feel fine with striking Thursday from the calendar completely. “Have you ever tried Captain Crunch?” he asked.

“Is it a game?”

“No,” said Bruce. “Come on.”

*

Thor eventually left to bring Jane back to the Tower. She and Darcy had been at the site. It was in a state of ruins since the Hulk had been through it, but Darcy and Janet had been working with a group of others to tighten security, and Jane was working on how to quickly easily program failsafes everyday into the things they were doing in the control room.

Bruce was again alone in the Tower, until Tony came home. By then, Bruce no longer really had an argument against what Tony, Thor, and Steve were doing to prevent Dave or others who had agreed with him from being a future threat. Steve would never have allowed torture, and it wasn’t Tony or Thor who were going to subdue Dave every time the day repeated. They would need to find people who were close enough to Dave, who could head him off every single morning. It was likely that Dave would get tired of trying to sabotage the project every single day, but Bruce could admit the necessity of keeping Dave and anyone who agreed with him off the site.

When Tony came into the lab, Bruce was still working on the reactor design at the holodesk. “Hey,” said Tony. He put a thigh on the holodesk, half sitting on it, right in the midst of all the projected images. They painted his face blue.

“Hey.”

"You can just go in my closet, you know."

Bruce kept working.

"My clothes not frumpy and wrinkled enough for you?" Tony asked. "Not enough ugly corduroy?"

Bruce didn't look at him. "I don't want to ruin eight hundred dollar pants next time I have an accident."

"We can get you man-diapers. So.” Tony’s voice was casual, curious. “Getting shot in the head. What was that like?”

“Hard to say,” Bruce said. “I was dead.”

“Mm-hm. You’re trying to find a way to stay off the construction site.”

Bruce moved another piece of the schedule around. Jane was perfectly capable of doing some of the work, but she simply didn’t have time to do both his tasks and hers. A lot of it could be done remotely, since so much of it was just programming, but Bruce needed to be there for several key tasks, including wiring the Chitauri crystals to the Flux Accelerator.

“You need to be there,” Tony said.

“I can do what I need to from here.” Bruce was working on one of the computers in Tony’s lab.

“You can’t do all of it.”

“I can train someone.”

“Why?”

Bruce didn’t turn. “You know why.”

“No, I don’t.”

Bruce pulled out Diego’s portion of the schedule. All of them were pressed for time, but Diego was smart. Maybe Bruce could talk him through programming the crystals. Maybe they could pull in someone entirely new.

“Enlighten me,” Tony said.

“Anyone can do what Dave did. Any day. We lose a whole day’s worth of practice if that happens, and might I also mention—dying, it’s difficult. I mean for the people I killed. Even if they come back the next day, it’s not—those aren’t ideal working conditions. Neither is everyone knowing I’ll go ballistic and kill them the next time someone happens to have a gun.”

“No one’s gonna have a gun.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’ve got a guy on it.”

“Tony, there were at least a hundred guys on it. Dave’s been working with us for weeks. He was one of the techs.”

“This guy doesn’t trust anyone. Total stiff.” Tony tapped his fingers on his leg. “You should hear him talk about legality. And the legitimacy of privately owning weapons of mass destruction. It’s a snooze fest.”

Bruce frowned. “How do you know him?”

Tony tapped his leg some more. “Best friend.”

“You mean—Colonel Rhodes.”

“Lieutenant Colonel.”

Bruce shook his head. “They don’t need me at the site. It’s better if I stay away.”

Tony’s reply was immediate. “I need you there.”

Turning toward him, Bruce took off his glasses. Tony wasn’t in the Iron Man suit. His hair was slicked back with either sweat or water, and he was wearing that t-shirt with the oroboros, the one that Pepper had lent Bruce that day. Tony had often worn it since then. Bruce knew it was some kind of in-joke, but he hadn’t figured it out yet. He didn’t really care. Tony looked relaxed, like they were talking about going out to eat, or watching television. “Tony,” Bruce said at last. “Pepper was the one who kept me out of it in the first place.”

“That’s Pepper,” said Tony.

“She knew it wouldn’t be safe for people to know I’m involved. Turns out she was right.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of playing the victim?” Tony tilted his head. “Really, is it fun for you?”

Bruce put his glasses back on, and turned around. “I have work to do.”

“You don’t believe that.” Tony stood, and went to rifle through the food Bruce had moved onto the lab bench behind him. “If you believed that, you’d come down and do it. Instead you’re trying to weasel your way out of it. This is cold.” Probably the grilled cheese sandwich. Bruce and Thor had eaten all the cereal. “You never believed in it at all. Any of it. You never believed that a handful of people could save the world.”

“If they can, I shouldn’t be part of the handful.”

“You are. You have to be.” Tony put a hand on Bruce’s shoulder, turned him around. “You’re the hand.”

“You’re smart,” Bruce said. “You’re so very smart. I don’t understand why you can’t see the problem with that.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m not rumpled and self-loathing.” Tony’s hand slid off of him. “Maybe it’s because I don’t feel sorry for myself.”

“Tony, if a few individuals the power to save the world, they have the power to destroy it.”

“Uh, yeah, but since that’s not really what we’re—”

“You put me on that site, you put the whole thing at risk.”

“Take you off that site, and there’s no chance it hell it’ll work. No one can take your place; you need to—”

“I need to not people in a position—”

“Take off your glasses.”

“. . . What?”

“I can’t look at you with those things on.” Tony put out his hand. “Take them off.”

“I’m not . . .” Bruce didn’t really know what he wasn’t.

“Off.” Tony waggled his fingers, so Bruce took his glasses off and put them in Tony’s hand. They quickly disappeared into Tony’s pocket. “You’re doing it again,” said Tony. “You’re running away. You ran away when you were the Hulk, you know. You ran away from Steve and I.”

Bruce’s lips twisted. “Would you prefer I’d stayed?”

“Yes.”

“He wanted to kill you.”

“How do you know?”

“I wanted to kill you.”

“Great. Fine.” Tony smiled. “I don’t give a shit. Let’s throw down.”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “You really don’t want that.”

“I’ll do it. If that’s what it takes. I’ll do it and I’ll party while I’m at it. You wanna know why?” Hand still in his pocket, Tony stepped forward, right inside Bruce’s space. “I may not be responsible. I may not be the upstanding moral figure you and your little buddy Steve seem to think I should be; I may not be the beacon of justice you all seem to think is necessary. You know who I am? I’m the guy who gets it done.”

“Tony—”

“Just for once, don’t whine.”

Bruce shut his mouth.

Tony’s eyes searched his. “You know what you need?” he said softly. “You need to stop running. You need to own it, or it’s gonna own you.” Turning away, he took his hand out of his pocket. “Since you can’t seem to do that, I’ll kick your ass every goddamn day until this is done, if that’s what it takes for you to do your job.”

Tony was all the way out of the room before Bruce realized he still had his glasses.

*

“Hey,” said Steve, several hours later.

No one had come into the lab since Tony, and Bruce hadn’t left it. JARVIS no longer seemed to be updating him on arrivals and departures.

Steve squeezed Bruce’s shoulder, then smiled like he knew he shouldn’t have, and hadn’t been able to help himself. “Do you mind if I hang out some?” said Steve.

“I’m not much fun at the moment,” Bruce said, but he pulled up one of Tony’s swivel chairs. Bruce had exchanged the holodesk for a lab bench with a flat screen monitor.

“What’re you doing?”

Bruce glanced at him. Steve was wearing a white t-shirt, loose pants—pretty different from the Captain America uniform he wore practically every day since the first two weeks of Fourth of July. His hair was wet as well. “Didn’t Tony tell you?” Bruce asked.

Steve smiled again, not really a happy one, but a kind one. “He said you were working on a way to stay off the work site.”

Bruce turned back to his monitor.

“He was really ticked,” Steve said.

“Yeah?” Bruce scrolled the text down. It had to be twice the normal size so he could see it without his glasses. “And what are you?”

“Concerned.”

Bruce shook his head, still not looking at Steve. “I never should have been there in the first place. I don’t know what I was thinking; I—”

“You were thinking you could help people.”

“I can’t. I can’t help people, Steve; I’m—”

“Bullshit,” Steve said softly.

Finally, Bruce turned to look at him.

“Excuse my French.” Steve smiled that rueful smile. “I know you can help people. I’ve seen you do it.”

“Right.” Bruce laughed. “You think if I just feel good enough about myself, everything will work out okay.”

“I don’t care whether you come to the site or not.” Bruce looked at him again, and Steve wasn’t smiling now. “You’re the scientist. You know whether you can do the work from here. You know how long training someone new will take, and what that does to the timelines. You decide. But if your decision is based on whether you think you’re capable of helping people—Stark says a lot of stuff that isn’t true, but I have to agree with him that that’s getting old.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with self-image,” Bruce said. “It has to do with hurting people.”

“I’m talking about whether you can help people.”

“I’m talking about killing people.”

Steve just looked at him for a long moment. “Doctor Banner,” he said. “I’ve killed people too.”

“If it happens again, it’s going to set the reactor back,” said Bruce. “It could happen every day, for all we know. Putting me in there is a risk.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t,” said Steve.

Bruce looked back at the screen. He’d been going back and forth. It would probably take three days to train someone new, and that training would stall some of the practice time in building the reactor. If they were aiming to build the reactor and complete it eight days from now—they were going to fail, and he was going to be the reason.

But if Bruce got shot tomorrow—if he got shot every day—it could stall the project indefinitely, and even if he didn’t get shot—now everyone knew what would happen if he did. This whole project hinged on hope, and the Hulk wasn’t something that could be depended upon to give it to them. People were going to be afraid; it just wasn’t going to work.

Tony hated him for not trying.

“I’m reading Love In The Time Of Cholera,” Bruce said, because that was the illegal download he had up, between the schedule and designs for various parts of the reactor.

Steve looked interested. “What’s that?”

“It’s a love story,” Bruce said. “Apparently. Stories. One young pair of lovers, another pair in their seventies.”

“Oh.” Then, very politely: “Um, so you like romance novels?”

“I started reading a lot more after the accident.”

“I really like Jules Verne,” Steve said, because of course he liked Jules Verne.

“Sometimes, I don’t understand how you exist,” said Bruce. Steve smiled, but it was the polite one, the one he used for cameras sometimes, the one that was slightly uncomfortable and just there to be nice. Bruce hadn’t meant to make him feel that way, like he was some sort of freak. “I don’t mean Captain America,” said Bruce. “I don’t understand how you can be . . .” His breath caught. He was going to choke on it. “Kind. You’re always kind,” he said, and didn’t choke.

“I’m not,” said Steve. “But I try.”

Bruce just stared at him. He wanted to touch him, and didn’t know how, because—because Steve’s biceps were so huge, and his knee was Captain America’s knee, and his face was where his lips were. Steve’s skin was so smooth, and very clear.

“Doctor Banner.”

Bruce jerked his eyes away from the milky white of the undersides of Steve’s forearms.

Steve was looking at him encouragingly. “I’m not a saint.”

Bruce could only hold his eyes for so long. “Don’t you ever just get tired?” he said, and looked away.

“Sure.”

“It doesn’t show.”

“Well.” The side of Steve’s mouth quirked. “One day—day thirty, I think it was. I decided to . . .” He scratched the back of his neck. “I was really tired of Tony. The way he just—so I . . . said some things. He punched me in the face.”

“He’s kind of touchy.”

“So I punched him back.” Bruce couldn’t hide his look of surprise, but Steve just went on, “And—well, you know. He’d just keep going, if I let him, so I made him get his suit, and I had my shield, and . . . well, it wasn’t very pretty.”

“Who won?”

“Tie.”

“I can’t imagine Tony being alright with that.”

Steve shook his head. “He could have beaten me. He was the one who called it. Then he wanted to go out for beer—he doesn’t even like beer. He was so relaxed; it was like we were finally—like he just needed to get it out of his system.” Steve’s eyes drifted down, golden lashes catching light. “Sometimes I just wish we could do that every day.”

“That sounds terrible.” Bruce’s lips twisted. “He said he’d fight me if I didn’t come to the site.”

“You believed him?” Steve sounded surprised.

“Seems like he’ll do an awful lot, if he’s convinced it’s right.”

Steve looked at him a little while. “You’re the one who always knows what Mister Stark is thinking,” he said at last, “but I would say that hurting you is pretty much the last thing he would ever want to do.”

Bruce shook his head. “I don’t know what he’s thinking.”

Steve was quiet for a moment. “He’s probably thinking you got shot in the head, Doctor Banner. He really doesn’t like it when people he cares about get hurt. He was livid when Jane died.”

“Part of that had to do with your intestines being all over the floor.”

Steve’s eyes slid away. “I didn’t know he cared that much.”

Bruce thought about telling Steve just how much Tony cared, but figured Tony wouldn’t appreciate it.

“Miss Romanoff says you need to eat after you Hulk out.”

Bruce almost snorted. “Miss Romanoff needs to mind her own business.”

Steve chuckled. “Okay,” he said, standing up.

Bruce stood up as well. “It’s going to take at least three days to get another scientist up to speed, so they can do what I’m doing at the site. It sets us back three days.”

“Alright,” said Steve. “It’s your decision.”

Bruce couldn’t think of a single way to touch him that wasn’t clumsy, awkward, or vaguely creepy.

“What?” said Steve.

“Nothing.” Bruce dropped his gaze.

Steve lingered. “The Hulk knew who I was,” he said finally. “I could tell he didn’t want to hurt me. Miss Lewis and Doctor Foster said the same thing.” He took a step forward, and put his hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “I have faith in you, Doctor Banner.”

The heat of his hand pressed in for a moment. Then it was gone, and so was Steve.

*

When Darcy and Jane came into the lab, Jane seemed really happy to see him and sort of sad he wasn’t the Hulk anymore. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said. “I’m so sorry that happened. I got in the way; I shouldn’t have—”

“Hey,” said Darcy. “How are you?”

“Fine,” said Bruce. “It wasn’t your fault,” he told Jane.

Jane squeezed Bruce’s shoulder, a comforting hand. “Are you sure you’re okay? What happens to the carbon?” The comforting hand slid down Bruce’s chest and started poking him. “I mean, I assume it vaporizes, but pulling apart fullerenes is some pretty tough work; does it—”

“Jane,” said Darcy.

“Oh, God,” Jane said. “I’m so sorry. You got shot.” Her hand moved up to his face. “Do the fullerenes force the bullet out, or do you think the Compton scattering actually causes the PNT bonds to—”

“Jane,” Darcy said again.

“It’s okay,” Bruce said, because Jane was touching his forehead and it was better than nothing.

“It’s not okay,” said Darcy. “You got shot.”

“I got better,” Bruce pointed out.

“There’s not even a scar,” said Jane. “I assume when you revert the PNT bonds reassert their structure, but you’ve got to wonder how they remember. I mean, your hair is restored to the same length, but your body knows the wound was wrong. I would have been fine with being shot, you know; you didn’t have to do that.”

“I’m sorry,” said Bruce.

Jane gave him a strange look. “Why are you sorry?”

Bruce really wanted to say something patronizing, but he liked her too much, and he was too tired; he just sort of wanted to wrap his arms around her and have her keep talking forever. “Um,” he said instead. “I think I probably broke the computers.”

“Yeah,” Jane said absently, and started touching his arm again. “You know, they’re doing research over at FuturePharm about the memory pattern the brain holds of the body. Like it has a blue print of how the body should be, and I just meant, if I got shot, I’d wake up tomorrow, no problem. But if you get shot—well, I don’t think that thing you said about the dead leaves was—”

“She’s still a little frazzled,” said Darcy, putting her arm around Jane.

“What?” Jane looked over at her.

“Just ixnay the estionsquay.” Darcy pulled Jane away, which also meant Jane stopped prodding Bruce. “You’ll be happy to know that Jane has also discussed with me my Tasing policy,” said Darcy. “And actually we’re giving up crazy people for Lent, so I won't be tempted.”

“I’m Jewish,” said Jane.

“No, you’re not,” said Darcy.

“I’m ethnically Jewish,” said Jane. “And isn’t Lent some Easter thing?”

“In fact we’re giving up crazy people all together,” Darcy told Bruce. “Thanks for, you know, saving our lives.”

“That was really heroic, what you did,” said Jane.

“I’m sorry,” said Bruce.

“Uh.” Letting Jane go, Darcy put her hands on her hips. “I don’t think ‘sorry’ is the word you want for being a superhero.” She thought about it a moment. “Maybe ‘oops.’”

Bruce turned to Jane. “What were you saying about that FuturePharm research?”

“Well,” said Jane, “you know I’m not a biologist. Or a psychoneuroimmunologist.”

“Who’s a what now?” said Darcy.

“You’re talking about the neuropeptide receptors in macrophages,” Bruce said.

“Yeah, and T cells,” said Jane. “And some lymphokines can transmit information back to the nervous system. And of course, you’ve got nerves on the thymus gland, spleen, lymph nodes, and bone marrow. We already know you can’t perform certain immune functions if you destroy specific areas of the brain, so FuturePharm’s been looking for a way to control immune function neurally.”

“I’m going over here now,” said Darcy.

“That’s interesting. I mean, we already know immune cells have a sensory capacity.” Bruce thought about it. “That could be really dangerous, if you could program a cell not to recognize foreign invaders, or program the brain so it doesn’t respond as though the body’s being attacked.”

“That’s true.” Jane looked thoughtful as well. “I really think FuturePharm is focusing on the idea that you could program the body to improve itself, or keep itself safer than it already does.”

“I’m just playing Fruit Ninja,” said Darcy.

Bruce continued talking to Jane about the FuturePharm research, which was really interesting. Like he had told Jane, it also sounded dangerous, but one of the best things about talking to Jane was that it didn’t feel like talking to Tony at all. Tony always wanted to be doing something; if Bruce had been having this conversation with him, Tony would already be planning six ways to reprogram people’s brains. Combined with the research he’d been doing on Loki’s scepter, and those half-finished ideas about a microchip Bruce had seen on Tony’s computer back when the Flux Accelerator had turned them into kids, it didn’t seem like such a good idea.

Talking to Jane about it, though, Bruce couldn’t help but wander down those tracks that were so well-traveled that they were nearly city highways in his brain: was there a serum, how did Erskine do it, what was Steve made of, what did he do wrong was there a cure was there a cure was there a cure there had to be a cure, what if it was another serum. Bruce never really talked about it with anyone—not since Mister Blue, anyway. Discussing the cure was a little too close to discussing his own initial experiment, and he didn’t want anyone getting any ideas.

But Jane seemed perfectly fine discussing abstract theory without really getting into any single application of the research. Furthermore, by the time they got really deep down into it, she appeared to have forgotten what had happened earlier that day. After those first five minutes, she didn’t apologize or ask questions or seek to comfort him, all of which would have been far worse than the disgust and fear and hatred no one had really given him.

Darcy sat a little bit away, messing around on her tablet. When Jane finally left, in search of Thor and food, Darcy stayed. She didn’t say anything, still doing something on the tablet, so Bruce sat behind his computer.

“That was some nice deflection there.” Darcy drew her finger along the tablet.

Bruce kind of wished she would just go away.

“No, really.” Darcy’s voice was flat. “You blinded her with science.”

Bruce pulled up the schedule and the roster of his tasks, still hoping there was a way he didn’t have to be at the reactor without stalling the project.

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Darcy guessed.

“Not really, no.”

“I guess I wouldn’t like killing people either.”

Bruce couldn’t just talk Diego through installing the Chitauri crystals on the Flux Accelerator. The process was too delicate; he needed to show him. Jane could show him, but that would take away from what she was doing, and—

“It’s not your fault, you know,” said Darcy. “No one blames you.”

“Did you ask the people who died?”

“Maybe I will tomorrow.”

“I’m not really in the mood for this.”

“Are you ever?”

Bruce looked over at her. She was still doing things on her tablet. “No,” he said, and turned back to his monitor.

“Figured. Say cheese.”

“What?” He turned again, and Darcy held up the tablet. “Don’t—”

“Too late.” Darcy put the tablet back in her lap.

Bruce watched her fingers move over it for a moment. “I’d really prefer you not . . . do whatever you’re doing,” he said.

“I’m just putting you on Facebook. And Twitter. And the blog. And Sue’s got you up like, everywhere.”

Bruce crossed his arms over himself. “You do realize how impossible you’re going to make it to live my life.”

“People already knew who you were.”

“They usually don’t recognize my face.”

“If you think they won’t recognize you after what happened today, you’re more crazypants than I thought.” Darcy’s fingers tapped on the tablet screen. “And remember how I gave up crazy for Lent.” She glanced up. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not looking at you like anything.”

“Sue and I’ve been planning your Facebook coming out party for like, a decade.” Darcy turned her attention back to her tablet. “Personally I was gunning for it, but Sue’s too afraid of Pepper.”

“Where is Pepper?” Bruce said, latching onto the only sane person he actually knew anymore.

“Wow,” said Darcy. “So, you really haven’t been watching the news. JARVIS?”

“Yes, Miss Lewis?” JARVIS said.

“Fire it up.”

“Yes, Miss Lewis.”

One of the monitors next to Darcy lit up, resolving into a news broadcast. Bruce recognized the security border of the reactor work site, around which different members of the press set up camp each morning. From the light, it looked to be afternoon, around the time when Natasha had been taking Bruce to Stark Tower. A reporter stood there with a microphone, interviewing Pepper Potts.

“Bruce Banner has my full trust and confidence,” Pepper was saying.

The reporter had shoulder-length brown hair, and a sharp face. Pepper looked as clean-cut and professional as always. Despite the destruction pictured behind her, not a hair was out of place.

“Was there a reason his identity was kept secret?” the reporter asked.

Pepper shook her head. “It wasn’t kept secret. Bruce is a private person. He’s very gentle, and doesn’t like to upset anybody. He thought that if people knew he was working on the project, it could jeopardize it.”

“He did jeopardize it though, didn’t he?” the reporter asked, bringing the mic back to herself. “Bruce Banner is the Hulk.” She held the microphone back to Pepper as Pepper shook her head again.

“A man named David Esten jeopardized the Stark reactor project. Let me make this clear.” Pepper looked at the camera. “Bruce is in as much control as any other human being. If someone comes at you with a knife, you can’t stop yourself from bleeding to death. The consequences for coming at Bruce Banner with a knife may be more devastating, but that doesn’t make it any more his fault. If we’re going to keep the reactor project online—which we are—we need to weed out the David Estens, not Bruce Banner.”

“Are you claiming that Doctor Banner is essential to the completion of the arc reactor project?”

“Yes. Yes, he absolutely is.”

“And you don’t think there will be any future Hulk incidents that would cause delays?”

“I can guarantee there won’t be. The Avengers have made sure of that.”

“But Doctor Banner still presents a risk.” Pepper opened her mouth, but the reporter went on, “Anyone near him is still in danger, aren’t they? Sometimes you can’t control who’s wielding the knife, Miss Potts.”

“Bruce Banner saved the world,” Pepper said. “He also saved my boyfriend. He’s also a personal friend of mine, and I would trust him with my life. Are people near him in danger? I feel like the safest person on Earth.”

“Thank you, Miss Potts,” said the reporter.

“She’s been doing interviews like that all day,” said Darcy, as JARVIS turned the volume down. “Don’t think Steve and Tony and all the rest of us didn’t do one too.”

Bruce was still looking at the screen. The airfield was supposed to be a no-fly zone, but they were playing aerial footage of the Hulk destroying the reactor site. Apparently someone had been there with a camera.

Bruce wouldn’t be surprised if it was S.H.I.E.L.D. Fury wanted to sell the Avengers just as much as Tony did—probably even more. Showcasing the Hulk destroying humanity’s only hope for the future wasn’t exactly good press, but the last thing Pepper had said had been important. Everyone remembered seeing the footage of the Hulk fighting the aliens, and with Pepper’s spin, that’s what they were thinking of, instead of how Bruce was sabotaging the reactor.

Nausea curled in Bruce’s stomach as he watched the Hulk roar at Thor, who was hovering some distance away in the sky. This—all of this—this was just a play, just one big play, and what did it matter if Pepper’s intentions were good, if Tony’s were, if Fury’s were; it put people in danger.

Bruce wouldn’t be surprised if Tony had put a bug in Pepper’s ear to talk Bruce up. Fear was a powerful weapon, but faith could be even more dangerous, and Bruce didn’t underestimate the power of people like Pepper and Steve to turn public opinion around on him. If people became convinced Bruce was a hero, they could even go so far as to forget the danger, and that was when things became truly perilous.

Bruce wanted people to be afraid of him. If they were afraid, they were safe.

“And she’s only even met you a handful of times,” Darcy was saying, “but you know, Janet likes everyone.

“Where is she?” Bruce said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen.

“Janet?” Darcy glanced up at him. “JARVIS, turn that off,” said Darcy.

“Pepper.”

Darcy stared at him. “That so was totally not the self-esteem boost I was going for, was it.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. A press junket? I don’t know if she’s back yet.”

Cleaning up his mess. “JARVIS,” Bruce said. “Where’s Pepper?”

“I believe she is being interviewed by Miss McFadden, of Nightline,” JARVIS said.

“Steve,” Bruce said.

“A meeting with Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo, among others.”

“Tony.”

There was a pause. “Mister Stark is currently in transit.”

Bruce almost asked in transit where, but realized the pause probably meant that Tony didn’t want to talk to him. “Thor,” Bruce said instead.

“Oooh,” said Darcy. “I know that one. Making out with some hot chick.”

“Indisposed,” said JARVIS.

Bruce couldn’t really think of anyone else.

“What were you gonna do,” Darcy said, dragging her finger over her tablet, “get angry at them?”

Bruce turned on her. “Why are you here?”

“You know, at first I was like, ‘dude, this guy is so totally Zen, no way he’s the Hulk.’” She dragged her finger in the opposite direction over her tablet. “Now I’m starting to get the Zen is just an act.”

Bruce thought about going over there. He thought about grabbing her by the arm, hauling her up. He thought about taking that tablet and smashing it on the ground, scaring her; he could scare her so bad. He had seen her scared, now, the way her big brown eyes with their heavy, shadowed lids could go wide with fear, the way her lips could tremble. He could make her do that, and he’d enjoy it.

“We gonna talk about what you said to Dave?”

Darcy still wasn’t even looking at him; she didn’t know she should be afraid. She should be terrified.

“’Bout all those bodies?” Darcy drew her finger over her tablet again, the movement lazy. “That was some freaky shit.”

He could crush her. He would feel her body under his hands, the way she was soft and plump in all the right places, what Tony’s had said about her tits; he could do it; feel the life go out of her—

“And how the blood would feel like jam? Kind of graphic.”

He’d have thoughts like this about Betty, sometimes, long before the Hulk.

“See, the thing is, I don’t think the Hulk works like that.” Darcy just kept pulling her finger over the tablet.

He’d have those thoughts about her when she’d said things that hurt, things like you are not your father, Bruce.

“He’s not really all about the gore and guts and blood. I mean, don’t get me wrong,” Darcy went on, “he’s pretty destructive. And I get that he’ll kill you if you make him angry. But he didn’t, you know, actively go around trying to kill anyone, except for Dave.” She tapped her tablet. “Unless you count those tanks and helicopters.”

He’d have these thoughts about Betty, and that was when he really started working on the super soldier serum, really got focused on it.

“I mean, you made out like he was this mass murderer,” said Darcy, “which he totally is. I get that. But he also seemed—I dunno, confused, like he didn’t understand why he was so big and angry, and why everyone was so afraid of him.”

Bruce made himself take a breath. “Darcy.”

“Hm?” She didn’t look up.

He made himself take another breath. “You can’t—you can’t feel sorry for the Hulk.”

“Oh.” Darcy dragged her finger over the tablet. “Why?”

Bruce scrubbed his hand over his face. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven. I started college late. How old are you?”

“You’re very sweet,” Bruce began.

“I don’t get that a lot,” Darcy said, “but okay.”

Bruce didn’t really know where he’d been going with that, so he changed tack altogether. “Get out of here.”

“Nah. I’m fine where I am. Thanks, though.”

He came closer. “Get out. Now.”

“What’re you trying to do?” She still didn’t look up. “Scare me?”

He was trying to scare her; he still wanted to, but when he tried to think about it, the idea of wrapping his hands around her throat made him want to throw up. “Darcy,” he said, and stopped.

“We don’t have to talk,” Darcy said. “Just go sit over there, mope around, feel sorry for yourself, and I’ll just sit over here on Tumblr talking about how awesome you are. It’s cool.”

“Darcy.”

“Seriously, Bruce, it’s cool.”

And suddenly Bruce had to strongly resist the impulse to get on his knees, to put his head in her lap, to ask her to put her hand in his hair and touch him, just touch him, over and over and gently and kindly and he wanted to smell her, just smell her. Natasha would have done it; she would have understood.

He just might do it anyway.

Instead, his thumb moved over his fingers, and he turned away.

*

Bruce couldn’t find a way to easily replace himself at the reactor site. Some of the other scientists could have been easily replaced—not because their work was less complicated, but because it was less unique. Bruce had learned all the ins and outs of the Flux Accelerator months ago, when he’d been trying to reverse the deaging; he’d been working with the Chitauri crystals since Day One, and the vibranium since Day Three.

He’d simply had more time to review and understand the work that needed to be done, and walking someone through all of it without significantly holding up the project was starting to look impossible. If Enrique Pym had been here, if T’Challa had been here—but they were half way around the world. By the time they got here, the day would probably be about to reset.

“What are you working on, anyway?” Darcy said, after a while.

“Thought we weren’t going to talk,” said Bruce.

“Yeah, well.”

Bruce closed the design of the robot he’d been looking at. He’d been thinking about programming one of Tony’s robots to do the work, but that, too, would take too long. “I’m reading Love in the Time of Cholera,” he said.

“That’s a good one,” said Darcy. “Are you a fan?”

“I haven’t finished it yet,” said Bruce. “It’s sort of long.”

“But you’re not really reading it, so I doubt the length would matter.”

“You should know that about me,” Bruce said, tapping the keyboard again. “I lie.”

“Yeah. Sue told me your parents died in a car crash.”

“Sue is an interesting woman.”

“I have this fabulous idea.”

Bruce went over the vibranium synthesis again. The programs that regulated the plasma temperatures before the pinch were easy enough to write remotely—

“Aren’t you going to ask me what my fabulous idea is?”

“No,” said Bruce.

“I’m going to go to bed,” said Darcy.

The programs were easy enough to write remotely, but if something went wrong with the electricity Thor zapped into the—

“I’m going to go to bed in one of Stark Tower’s guest rooms, on one of Stark Tower’s beds, in one of Stark Tower’s sheets.” Darcy paused. “I wonder how much the sheets cost. Two thousand dollars? Three?”

“Have fun with that.”

“You could come too. I don’t mean with me.” There was another pause. “Unless you want to.”

If the electricity Thor fed into the cathodes didn’t bring the plasma to the temperatures they needed, the pinch would fail. It had only happened twice since they’d—

“I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to bed,” Darcy said, and suddenly Bruce realized that he couldn’t either. He’d gone to sleep at an adequate hour the night of July third, which meant that when the day reset, he felt rested enough that staying up the following twenty-four hours wasn’t too tough.

“I went to sleep after midnight on Wednesday,” said Darcy. “Pulling an all-nighter on four hours of sleep is kind of a bitch.”

The pinch had only failed twice since they’d successfully started constructing the Z machine every day, and one of those failures had been the first time they’d tried it. But still, there was the possibility that—

“I’m going to go to sleep on a Stark Tower pillow.” Darcy stood up. “This is going to be awesomesauce. Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

“Good night,” Bruce said.

Darcy came closer. “I bet there’s gonna be feathers involved.”

Bruce’s mind went sort of blank, because Darcy and a soft bed and feathers, and she was offering. Quite blatantly.

“This is like a day off.” She was close enough to touch. “You’re kind of a champ.”

Please go away, Bruce thought, and kept his eyes on the screen.

Darcy took one step closer. “Okay,” she said. “’Night.”

Then she turned around, and left.

*

By the time Pepper returned to Stark Tower, it was early morning July fifth, about an hour before time reset. Bruce still didn’t know what to do about going to the work site, and he wasn’t reading Love in the Time of Cholera, either. He was sitting in Tony’s lab with his head in his hands, thinking about whether his expertise at the reactor was worth putting all those lives at risk. All that fear.

It couldn’t be, and yet Tony thought it was. Steve and Jane, Darcy—they all probably thought it was, and Pepper—

A door opened across the lab, and Bruce lifted his head.

“Bruce,” Pepper said, and started walking swiftly across the lab.

Bruce stood up, startled, trying to draw the remnants of the anger he’d felt earlier around him.

“Bruce,” Pepper said again, and put her arms around him.

Bruce just stood there, and it was dark in the lab. JARVIS must have turned down the lights for some reason—maybe Bruce had thought about what Darcy had said after all, and accidentally fallen asleep. Maybe it was mood lighting, and the glow from the computer screens was all blue.

Pepper was so slender, and she kept pressing him to her. Her hand was light at the back of his neck, her fingers touching the hair there, and Bruce knew what her hands looked like, even though he couldn’t see them now. Her fingers were long and elegantly tapered, beautiful, feminine hands, eminently capable.

“Bruce,” she said, and her voice was soft and very kind against his ear. “I’m so sorry.”

Bruce didn’t know what she was sorry for, but his hands came up anyway, and he wrapped his arms around her. He didn’t know why she was holding him; he didn’t know why it had to be her, but he didn’t want her to stop, and his face was pressed up against her shoulder.

“Oh God, Bruce,” she said again. “I’m so sorry.”

Her hand moved in his hair.

“I should have told them about you from the beginning,” Pepper said, pulling back enough to see his face.

Bruce didn’t know what she was talking about. Letting her go, he took a step back.

“I did it all wrong,” said Pepper. “Mom was right—I did it wrong. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what you’re sorry about.”

“I should have put a security detail on you.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You should have had a guard and escort. Nat’s furious with me; I didn’t—”

“I—Nat?”

Pepper nodded miserably. “She didn’t say it, but you know how she gets.”

Bruce didn’t know at all.

“She trusted me,” said Pepper. “She doesn’t trust anyone, but she trusted me, and I—I made the wrong decision. I thought that if people didn’t know you were there, you wouldn’t be in danger.” Her laugh was choked. “People can’t fear what they don’t know, right?”

Bruce stared at her.

“I thought the guard would call attention. I was wrong.”

Bruce stared at her some more.

“Oh God,” said Pepper, and she was crying. “Don’t look at me that way; I’m so, so sorry.”

She’d stood there, stoic, while Tony put himself in danger, that third day of rioting. When Steve had come into Tony’s apartment with his insides on the outside, she’d politely excused herself to go throw up, then come back in and helped Bruce sew him up and clean him, barely batting a lash. Bruce had seen her handle the press; he’d seen her handle one catastrophe after another out on the work site; he’d seen her handle Tony Stark.

He didn’t know why it was this that reduced her to tears.

“Please,” said Bruce, and didn’t know what to say. He fumbled a little, reached out; he didn’t know how to touch her, but he wanted her to stop. “Please don’t—please don’t cry.”

Pepper sniffed. “Tony called Rhodey. He’s in DC; he’s been working at the Pentagon, coordinating the Air Force for some of our shipments—he can get to the site by ten. You’ll like him, Bruce; he’s the best.”

“I’m not,” Bruce tried to say, and couldn’t get it out of his mouth.

“And Nat’s put Clint on you.”

“Clint.”

Pepper nodded, still sniffling. “I know she thinks we should have done it that way from the beginning.” Shaking her head, she swallowed hard. Her face got red and puffy when she cried. “I’ve never seen the Hulk before, but it was awful, and I’m sorry that I put you through that. I put everyone through that, and I know how you hate it.” She covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “Janet thinks it’s her fault; she thinks security was on her.”

That was why she was crying, Bruce realized finally: she thought that she had failed. “Pepper,” he began.

She lifted wet eyes to him. “The worst of it is, you probably think it’s your fault. You’ve been doing so much good for everyone, just working away no questions asked, and you still think you’re not good enough to help.

Bruce’s thumb ran over his fingers. “Whether I’m good enough isn’t really what matters.”

“You’re wrong.” She wiped her eyes. “You’re so wrong. That’s the only thing that matters. The only thing.”

“Pepper.” Bruce’s voice felt strange in his mouth. “You can’t be perfect.”

“Yes, I can. I have to be.”

“Actually, no,” said Bruce. “Not at all.”

Pepper shook her head again. “I should have listened to my mother. She’s always right.”

“Um,” said Bruce. “Well, I’ve met your mother. I sort of doubt it.”

“You’d be surprised. She’s freakishly knowledgeable. She told me I was in love with Tony, you know, and . . .” Pepper tried to wipe her nose without getting her fingers what. “Ugh. I just hate it.” Fixing her big eyes on his, she said, “I hate that I hurt you.”

“It wasn’t you.”

Pepper sniffled. “Can I hug you again?”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers, but then her arms were coming up. His came up too, and Bruce knew that he would go to the site tomorrow.

It had not been stubbornness that had prevented him from making that decision. It had not been cynicism. It had not been self-hate; he had honestly been trying to keep people safe, to give people hope, to do the right thing. Somehow, somewhere along the way, he’d stopped knowing what that was.

The Hulk wasn’t the worst thing in the world anymore. He’d clung to that for so long that holding her felt like letting go.

Chapter Text

On the forty-third Fourth of July, Natasha picked Bruce up from his apartment in a helicopter, and didn’t lift off. “Where to?” she said instead.

“What?” The chopper was loud, so Bruce thought he must have misheard.

Natasha turned to him, speaking quite clearly. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Aren’t you bringing me to the site?”

Natasha shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “If I don’t go to the site, it’s going to delay the project.”

“You wanna go to the site?” Natasha turned back to the controls, flipped a switch above her head. “Fine. I’ll take you to the site.”

“I just didn’t know there were options.”

“There’s always options, Bruce.”

“What about the project?”

“What about it?” Natasha maneuvered the controls, and the skids lifted off the roof.

“You don’t care if it gets delayed?”

“Not my primary concern.”

“What’s your primary concern?” Dread began to coil in Bruce’s stomach when Natasha didn’t answer. He was fairly certain her silence was a suggestion that her primary concern was him. Don’t let me matter that much to you, he wanted to say. Instead he said, “Pepper says you’re furious with her.”

Natasha pulled the controls back as they rose higher into the air.

“Are you?” Bruce asked.

“No.”

“She thinks you are.”

“I’m not.”

“She seems to think it’s her fault I Hulked out and killed people,” Bruce said.

“Potts thinks anything that goes wrong is her fault.” Natasha slowly turned the helicopter. “She’s a control freak.”

“She says you won’t tell her you’re angry, but you are.”

“What, you want us all to change color now?”

“No.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Would you show it if you were?” said Bruce.

Natasha pressed her lips together. “Stop being annoying.”

“I’m not really the most comforting person.” Bruce’s hand moved over his knuckles. “I’m not good at fixing problems or . . . but if you ever want to—if you ever need someone to listen, or—”

“Jesus.” Natasha flipped another switch above her head. “You’re as mushy as Clint.”

Bruce smiled. “Thanks.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“I know,” said Bruce.

*

Natasha stayed with Bruce on the site, escorting him personally to the control room. Twenty minutes later, Clint came in the door. He was wearing the uniform Bruce vaguely remembered from the Chitauri attack, bow on his back and a gun strapped to his thigh.

“What took you so long?” Natasha said.

“Fixing my hair.” Clint glanced at Bruce. “Hey.”

“Hey,” said Bruce. He hadn’t seen Clint since Pepper and Tony and Steve had been twelve years old.

“Don’t get in his way,” Natasha said.

“Whatever you say, Miss Grumpy-pants.”

Natasha turned to Bruce. “Just ignore him. Bye Bruce.” Rather pointedly not saying goodbye to anyone else, she walked out of the control room.

Clint turned to watch her go. “You ever get tired of her getting all up in your business?” he asked, when the door had closed.

“Not really,” said Bruce.

“Yeah. ’Dat ass.” Briefly, Clint went to a happy place. Then he shook his head. “I’ll be around. Have fun with your nerd shit, or whatever it is you do.”

“Um,” said Bruce. “Okay.”

Bruce wasn’t really sure how to face the other scientists in the control room, but the S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists acted like it was any other repeating day. Gail Chiang, who worked for Stark Industries Research and Development, and whom Bruce had killed, arrived later in the day. She didn’t talk to Bruce, and Bruce didn’t know how to talk to her. When he tried, he could tell that she was afraid, so he left her alone. But Gail stayed there in the control room the whole day, and did her job for the reasons Tony had said Bruce should do his: it was important.

Jesse, who also worked for Stark Industries R&D, didn’t have a problem talking to Bruce. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, when he came in and saw Bruce at his computer. Jesse was short, with spiky black hair and a sneer curling his lips.

“I know,” said Bruce, and got out of his seat.

“You fucking took apart this office,” said Jesse.

“I know,” said Bruce.

“You fucking broke my leg,” said Jesse.

“I know I shouldn’t be here,” Bruce said, “but we’re close to getting the reactor down to the speed we need, and if I have to—”

“Fuck that noise,” said Jesse. “If you’re so fucking important, you should have fucking told us you turn into a big fucking freak who goes around massacring—”

“There a problem?”

Bruce hadn’t heard the door, but it was open, and Clint was lounging in it. He looked like he was asking if anyone had a stick of gum.

“Yes, there’s a fucking problem,” said Jesse. “That freak fucking knew it; he fucking said, that he could kill us all, that he liked it—”

“I’d enjoy kicking your ass,” said Clint, “if you wanna gimme a reason to.”

Bruce looked around, and the worst part of it was Gail, because she was so brave, and she looked so terrified. Rowe, one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, had a look of disgust on his face, but Bruce couldn’t tell whether it was for him, Jesse, or Clint.

“Kick my ass?” Jesse pointed at Bruce. “He’s putting this whole fucking project at risk.”

Clint just kept lounging there. “Sure, but since Banner’s this whole, like, total Zen master of acceptance, he’s not really gonna pop unless you put a bullet in his brain. Me, on the other hand . . . I have kind of a short fuse.”

“That fucker lied,” said Jesse, “and he broke my leg, and—”

Clint stood up straight. “Sit down. Shut up. Do your job, or Imma take you outside, and you ain’t gonna like what happens to you.”

Jesse looked uncertain. Bruce totally got why—Clint’s face was perfectly affable, but his arms were really big. Somehow the dichotomy made him that much more intimidating.

Jesse sat down.

Nodding encouragingly, Clint mimed putting his hands on a keyboard and typing.

Jesse put his hands on the keyboard, and Rowe stood up. “Jesse’s right.”

“Shut up,” said Clint. “Aren’t you S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“You know Hill doesn’t like it either,” said Rowe.

“Fuck Hill,” said Clint.

Rowe glanced at Bruce. “You’re a great scientist, and you’ve contributed a lot to the project. I knew who you were—of course I did, but Jesse’s right. You put everyone in jeopardy by being here.”

“Sit your ass down,” said Clint, who really seemed to enjoy the word ass.

Rowe turned to Clint, and now the disgust was fully evident. “I’m getting really tired of Fury’s little Avengers project. He puts a powder keg in a room and thinks if it just tries hard enough, it won’t explode.”

Clint looked around the room. “You people, get back to work. You,” he said to Rowe, “come with me. You wanna come too?” he asked Jesse.

Uncertainly, Jesse glanced around the room. Then he shook his head.

“Fine.” Clint looked at Rowe, and jerked his chin outside. “Let’s go have tea and discuss our differences. Carry on, ladies.”

Rowe went with Clint, and Clint shut the door.

*

Clint came back fifteen minutes later. “Hey, Jolly Green,” he said to Bruce, sitting on the edge of his desk. “You’re down a scientist. Any line on where we—oh, hello.”

It was 11:17, which meant Darcy Lewis was walking in the door. “Does anyone know where Rowe’s going? I saw him—who are you?”

Clint stood up. “Single.”

Darcy frowned at Bruce. “Who is he?”

“Available,” said Clint. “Interested.”

“That’s Clint Barton,” said Bruce.

“Hawkeye,” said Clint. “There are just so many things that people call me, it’s impossible to keep my identity straight. Most of the time it is though. Straight. Except for that time in Buenos Aires.” Then he winked at Bruce.

Bruce turned quickly back to his computer monitor so that he could stare at it blankly.

“Where did you get this guy,” said Darcy, “and what is he wearing?”

“Nothing I can’t take off,” said Clint.

“You need new friends,” Darcy told Bruce. “Seriously, Tony’s bad enough.”

“Ouch.” Clint gave a low whistle. “That’s cold.”

“I think Rowe didn’t want to work with me here,” said Bruce, finding his voice at last. “Do we have anyone who can replace him, or should I—”

“No,” said Darcy. “You’re staying. Janet and I went over this yesterday, just in case. Williams Innovations keeps tooting their horn; they wanna send their heir over. Tony says he’s a good scientist. We’ll get him slotted in. Same with the interns.”

“Interns?” Bruce asked.

“Two of them quit,” said Darcy.

“Because of—”

“Easy to replace,” said Darcy.

Clint raised his hand. “I can be your intern.”

Darcy’s eyes scanned him. “Get a shirt.”

“Can I borrow yours?”

“I’m gonna go sort out Simon Williams,” Darcy said, and left.

“Wish I was Simon Williams,” Clint muttered.

“She’s not actually a piece of meat,” Bruce said. “Just so you know.”

Clint grunted. “I’m horrible with girls.”

“Maybe if you toned it down.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Sorry about that asshat Rowe. You’re better off without him.”

Bruce sort of doubted it, since it was going to take a bit to bring Simon Williams up to speed as well. Darcy had been right, though: it was much easier to replace Rowe than it would have been Bruce. Bruce didn’t like to admit it, because it felt like arrogance, but there wasn’t really time to be self-conscious.

“So, is she?” Clint said.

“What?” Bruce glanced up.

“The chick with the—” Clint made a curvy figure with his hands. “Is she single?”

“Uh,” said Bruce. “Yeah.”

“Excellent.” Clint pushed off the desk. “I’ll be around.”

*

After another fifteen minutes, Clint opened the door again. “Seriously,” he was saying, “I’m thinking I might try science. It’s where all the chemistry is.”

Another man followed him in. He was tall, African American, quite good looking, and wearing an Air Force uniform. Bruce recognized him from Tony’s file. “Doctor Banner,” he said, when Bruce stood up. “I’m Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes.”

He held out his hand, and for a moment, Bruce didn’t know what to do with it. That uniform was sort of like waving red in the face of a bull, everything about it smelled to Bruce like fear, and every instinct was saying go go go. But this was Tony’s friend, and he was supposed to be here for Bruce’s protection, and behind him, Gail Chiang just kept working away. Bruce took Rhodes’s hand, and shook it.

“Tony didn’t tell you anything about me, did he,” Rhodes said, letting him go.

“He said you were a snooze fest,” Bruce said.

“Yeah, okay, figures. Talked to Fury on the way over; you’ve got Agent Barton on full surveillance.”

“Nice to be acknowledged,” said Clint.

“I’ve also got guards outside of the control room—”

“Don’t need ‘em,” said Clint.

“—and my guys are redoing the background checks on all your scientists, interns, runners. I’ll be doing sweeps, and we’ve got the air covered.”

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “Thanks.”

Rhodes just looked at him a minute. “You’re safe,” he said.

“I don’t really get concerned for my safety,” Bruce pointed out. “It’s everyone else that’s a problem.”

Rhodes tilted his head, expression thoughtful. “I always wondered why you left New York. After the aliens. I was sort of surprised Tony didn’t ask you to stay.”

“He did.”

“Uh-huh.” Rhodes didn’t look surprised. “You didn’t like the idea of settling down in plain sight.”

“Among other things.”

A faint smile appeared at the side of Rhodes’ mouth. “You know, most the guys on the force think General Ross is a basket case.”

“Most the guys this side of Japan think General Ross is a basket case,” said Clint. “Oh, wait, that’s everyone.”

Rhodes gestured toward Clint. “What he said.”

“Good to know,” said Bruce.

“And I never thought the Iron Man armor was the best idea ever,” Rhodes went on. “Even when I was wearing it. But sometimes, bad ideas, they can do good things.”

“Iron Man is different than the Hulk,” said Bruce.

“And you’re a different man than Tony,” said Rhodes. “For which I thank God every day.”

“Yeah, the facial hair alone.” Clint gestured at his own clean-shaven face. “I mean . . .” He shuddered.

Rhodes glanced at him, and Clint looked very innocent. Turning back to Bruce, Rhodes said, “Nice to meet you, Doctor Banner.”

“Thank you,” Bruce said.

It was the most peaceful encounter Bruce had ever had with a current member of the U.S. military forces.

*

Most of Day Forty-three was a wash. Rowe had to be replaced, as did two of Darcy’s interns, and about a total of point one percent of personnel. Steve claimed it was still a far smaller impact than having to replace Bruce. Even if Bruce hadn’t come to the site, he explained, some people had soured on the project, and the damage was done. Pepper said people had to be replaced every day, either because they stopped believing the effort was worthwhile, or it wasn’t working out like they thought it would.

In short, the people in charge of the project didn’t seem to think the Hulk’s impact was all that bad. Janet claimed it was a blip on the radar. She’d said there’d been a bigger blip on Day Thirty-Five, when CHOAM had decided to pull out of the project, and she’d had to scramble for more palladium.

In the control room, they spent most of the day bringing Simon up to speed and practicing some of the more delicate programming. After the initial commotion, Bruce didn’t really see or hear much from his new security detail—Clint and Rhodes seemed to have everything well in hand.

“It’s for you,” Jane said, sometime at around eight in the evening.

Bruce looked up. Jane was holding out her phone.

“Me?” Bruce frowned. “That’s your phone.”

“It’s Doctor Ross,” said Jane.

Bruce just stared at her.

“Doctor Elizabeth Ross. From Culver?” Jane’s brow furrowed. “I thought you knew her. She said she didn’t have your number; then she saw me on the news and thought—”

“Yes.” Bruce hadn’t really heard anything after Doctor Ross, but he took the phone anyway. Once it was in his hand it was like Jane wasn’t there; it was like no one was there; the control room and the reactor and time, it didn’t exist.

“Bruce?” said Doctor Elizabeth Ross, and he was going to break the phone; he was going to drop it; he was going to crush it or throw it or something—“Are you there?”

“Yeah,” said Bruce. “I’m here; I’m . . .”

“It’s you. It’s really you.”

Bruce closed his eyes. “I,” he said. That was pretty much all he could come up with.

“I can’t believe I finally got a hold of you.”

“I,” said Bruce. “I thought we . . .”

She waited for him, but Bruce couldn’t finish, because they’d never agreed not to contact each other. She had never agreed. “If it’s the end of the world,” she said, “I needed to hear your voice. Even if it’s just one last time.”

“I can’t,” said Bruce.

There was a pause. “Bruce,” she said, in that particular way—so sad, and—and—

“I—I can’t,” said Bruce, “I need—” He needed to breathe; he needed to get out, he needed—he opened the door to the control room, where two armored guards in Air Force uniforms were standing. “I need to go out,” Bruce told the guards.

“Bruce?” Betty’s voice came over the phone.

“Just for a minute,” Bruce said. “Can I go?”

“Bruce?” Betty sounded worried now. “Where are you?”

“What’s the problem?” Clint seemed to come out of nowhere.

“I need to—just a minute,” Bruce told Betty. He looked at Clint. “I need to. Please.”

Clint held his eyes for a long minute. “Okay,” he said.

“Doctor Banner isn’t allowed—” One of the guards began.

“Cool your jets,” said Clint. “He’s with me.”

“Bruce,” said Betty. “Where are you? Are you okay? Does someone have you—”

“I’m fine,” Bruce said.

Clint kept talking to the guards, but he must have made it okay, because Bruce kept walking, and they didn’t try to stop him.

“I’m fine,” Bruce told Betty. “I just—I needed to . . . leave.”

“Where are you?” Betty asked.

It was dark outside, but they brought the floodlights every day. It looked like some kind of sports stadium filled with massive machinery. Bruce made his way around the dark edges, between tanks of gas and vats of metal.

“Where are you?” Betty’s voice was worried again.

“Brooklyn,” Bruce said, turning away from a spray of sparks.

“And you’re okay?”

There was a guard standing on the perimeter—several of them, and Bruce turned away from them, too.

“Bruce?”

“Yes.” Bruce slid down against a canister of gas. There was a truck nearby, blocking him from view, and there were a bunch of tanks and metal things. It was dim, and there were no people. “I’m okay,” he said again.

“I saw the Hulk on TV,” said Betty.

Bruce swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

“God, Bruce.” There was a long pause. “Are you safe now?”

“Yeah.” Bruce closed his eyes. “Yeah, they’ve got a guard. Lots of guards.”

“But you can leave?”

“Apparently.”

“Are you sure they’re not going to hurt—”

“Betty.” Bruce dug his fist hard into his knees. “I’m fine.”

“I tried to get a hold of you every day,” said Betty. “Every day, since this whole thing started.”

“I . . .” Bruce felt something in his throat catch. “Why?”

“Oh God, don’t be an idiot. I tried to get a hold of you after the aliens, but I couldn’t. I even went through Stark Industries; they kept rerouting me.”

“I,” Bruce said. “I’m sorry.”

“Just let me say this,” she said. “I need to. I love you, Bruce.”

Bruce opened his eyes, and he could see the workers erecting a metal skeleton, a vast, ugly thing, full of man’s best intentions.

“I’ve always loved you. I never stopped.”

He could see the sparks, pools of melted metal and the glimmer of machinery, burning bright against the dark.

“And even though I know now we’re always going to have our separate lives, I needed to say that to you, because you need to know.”

Bruce could see the winding paths of construction and destruction, just like birth and death, the fire and tumult of what the universe must have been, being born from the black, and she was saying—

“You need to know—you’re are an incredible man. I’ve never met anyone else who would sacrifice what you have, the lengths you’ve gone to—just to be decent. And you are decent, Bruce. I know that you don’t think you are, but you are. You’re more than decent. Bruce. You’re one of the best people I have ever known.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“Because if today is the last day we’re ever going to live,” said Betty, “I want you to know. I want you to know for all time.”

Bruce just sat there, cradling the phone.

There was another long pause. “I do love Leonard, Bruce.”

Bruce closed his eyes again, put his head down to his pulled-up knees.

“I love him,” Betty said, “and I have a life with him that I’m happy with. But I will never forget you, and I hoped that if you could just know that—if you can just believe that . . . Bruce?”

Swallowing hard, Bruce brought his head up, thunked it against the tank in back of him. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

“I’m not sure you ever really did believe it,” said Betty, “but I want you to know that it’s still true. There’s someone in the world who loves you. Who will always love you, no matter what happens.”

“You,” said Bruce, because he was still stuck trying to process the fact that he was hearing Betty Ross’s voice. “You called Jane Foster.”

“She was a student at Culver,” said Betty. “I didn’t have any other way to get a hold of you.”

“How did you get her number?”

“Student records.”

“Sounds like you went to a whole lot of trouble.”

“Yes, Bruce.” Now she sounded amused.

“But,” Bruce said, and couldn’t come up with the rest. He just didn’t understand why she would bother.

“Bruce,” she said, in her most patient voice—the one he loved and hated. “When time stands still, you do the things that are most important to you. You eat the food you like, you visit a place you’ve never been, you tell the people you love that you love them, forgive the people who need forgiving, and in general, try to be a better person than you could when time was clawing at your back.”

Bruce swallowed again. “Did you have the panang?”

“Oh, God.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “Do you mean that one on the other side of Braddock?” Bruce just waited, because what other Thai food could he mean, and she said, “That place hasn’t been there in ages.”

“Oh.”

“Sometimes I dream about it,” she said.

“I do too.” It was the perfect curry.

“You sound good.”

Bruce almost laughed. “You do too.” He picked an invisible piece of lint of his knees. “Where did you go?”

“What?”

“A place you’ve never been,” said Bruce. “Where did you go?”

“You’re going to make fun of me.”

Bruce’s mouth twisted in a smile and he thought it quite possible that he was going to cry. “Maybe,” was all he said.

“It’s impossible to get flights or you know I would have gone to New Zealand.”

“What’s in New Zealand?”

“See, now you’re going to make fun of me again.”

“Oh, no,” said Bruce. “You are not serious.”

“Why are you making fun of me?”

“You’re cute,” said Bruce.

“You know, Len never makes fun of me.”

“No, really,” said Bruce. “It’s adorable.”

“Stop it.”

Bruce could feel himself smiling, and he never wanted to touch someone as much as he wished he could just reach through the phone and—God, her hair, just her hair, to brush it back behind her shoulder, tuck it behind her ear, and her neck—just his fingertips on her neck; she used to let him kiss—God, she used to let him—she used to let him, every part of her, and he probably could again if he wanted to, he could all over again, because of the way she—

“I like those movies,” she said. “I like them and I love you and that’s never going to change.”

Bruce swallowed hard. “You liked all of them?”

“What?”

“I wasn’t—” Bruce started running his thumbnail between the lines on the corduroy on his knees. “I wasn’t around for the last one so I—”

“Yeah,” Betty said quickly. “I went with Ondrea.” There was a pause. “You remember Ondrea?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Bruce, you really should have learned the lab techs’ names.”

“They were lab techs.”

“Oh my God, you haven’t changed.”

Pressing his lips together, Bruce kept tracing the lines on his knees. “Yes, I have.”

There was another pause. “I know. Bruce—”

“You still didn’t tell me where you went.” Bruce pressed the phone closer to his ear, as if he could bring her closer. “Instead of New Zealand.”

“The Kennedy Space Center,” said Betty. “It’s not like there’s much to see, but I wanted to see the launch complex, and—we tried to go to the visitor center, but you know, it’s the end of the world so it wasn’t exactly open—”

“Right,” said Bruce. “Was it ‘approximately’ open?”

“I might have found a door.”

“I see you haven’t changed, either.”

“I miss you.” Her voice was all husky, the way it got when he used to—her voice was husky. “I miss you a lot,” she said.

“What was it like?” Bruce asked. “The space center. I always wanted to see it.”

There was a pause. “Really? You never wanted to see anything.”

Bruce traced the lines on his pants.

“I don’t mean anything, anything,” said Betty.

There were all these ridges in corduroy. All these tiny ridges, and Bruce had never really understood what the point of them was.

“You just—you never seemed that interested in travel,” said Betty.

“I wasn’t.” Bruce kept picking at the ridges. “Did you forgive him?”

“Who?”

Bruce picked some more. “Your dad.”

“My—Bruce, no.” She took a deep breath, expelled it. “No. What makes you think—”

“You said ‘forgive the people who need forgiving.’”

Bruce could almost see her: the way she pressed her wide, full lips together when she didn’t like something or when he made her sad; the way her eyes were so steady and searching. Her hair was so black and the angle of her neck was such utter perfection that Bruce would get distracted by it, so completely and utterly distracted; he hadn’t even been able to look at the lab work sometimes because of what her hair did at the back of her neck, the way there were loose little curls when she put it up. “Some things are unforgivable,” Betty said.

“All sins are pardonable.”

“I—did you just quote the Bible at me?”

“I’m sure Gandhi thought so too.”

“You hate religion.”

“I don’t hate it,” said Bruce. “I mean, any more.”

“You have changed.”

“Betty, I’m friends with Steve Rogers. It’s like being friends with Jesus or something.”

“You’re friends?”

“I can have friends.”

“You know I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know. Just wanted to give you a hard time.” Bruce’s hand wandered on his knee. “I wouldn’t blame you if you forgave your father, Betty. In fact, you probably should.”

“I’ve never wanted to.”

Bruce counted the ridges across his knee.

She started to say, “You—”

“I didn’t want to travel,” Bruce said, because he needed her to know. “When we were together. Or before that. But I used to think about things, like—like seeing a shuttle launch. Or CERN. The Keck Observatory. Stuff like that. But I also wanted . . .” He traced the ridges on his knees. “I’d think about things like—taking you to a warm beach somewhere and just . . . forever. Or, a long time, anyway. And we’d—I don’t know. Do those stupid things, like—like walk on the beach. Eat out.” Make love. “Go to concerts. Stupid things.”

“You know I don’t think those things are stupid.”

“But I always did.”

“I didn’t know you thought about doing them anyway.”

“I didn’t. I mean . . .” Closing his eyes, Bruce thunked his head against the tank again. “It wasn’t me thinking it. I mean it was me, but—” Bruce swallowed. “It was always some . . . amorphous future some part of me planned out—not something I actually thought that we were going to do. Just something I thought we could do, if I could just—”

“You—”

“If I could finish everything,” Bruce said quickly. “If I could accomplish enough, achieve enough; if I could be someone who could give you—”

“I didn’t want anyone else, Bruce.”

“I miss you too,” said Bruce. “All the time.”

There was a little sound, and he knew that she was crying.

“You always made me wanna be better,” said Bruce.

“Please don’t—” She choked a little. “Please don’t go out of touch again. After the attack last year, I knew you were in New York, but short of going up there myself—and I knew you didn’t want me, but I—”

I always want you, Bruce thought, but didn’t say it.

“—but if you just gave me your phone number, a working email address, anything; I promise I wouldn’t use it, but sometimes I . . . I, Bruce, don’t shut me out. Don’t make me be a stranger in your life.”

“What about Leonard?”

“I think—” She made that little sound again. “Bruce, I’m going to marry him.”

“That’s good.”

“He understands,” Betty says. “He knows we’re never getting back together.”

Bruce knew it too, but it still hurt to hear her say it.

“And I know that you don’t want to,” said Betty, “but I think that if you got to know him, you’d like him too.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“I don’t mean to throw it in your face; I just want—”

“Betty.” Bruce put his forehead down on his knees. “Please don’t cry. I don’t—I don’t want to make you cry anymore.”

“Oh God,” she said, voice strangled.

“I know I’m really good at it,” Bruce said.

“Shut up.” That made Bruce smile, because Betty could get very sensitive when she cried; she didn’t like to do it any more than he did. “Shut up and give me your email.”

“At the same time?”

“Shut up.”

“Gamma condition,” said Bruce. “No space. At zoho dot com.”

Betty took a noisy breath. “Thank you.”

“All those things you said,” said Bruce. “I’m—I feel the same way.”

“Bruce—”

“Except marrying Len. I’m not going to marry Len. I mean, I’m just as in love with him as you are, except—you know, gay marriage isn’t legal in Virginia so—”

“I didn’t know you were on the Stark reactor project,” Betty interrupted. “I kept trying to track you down; I had no idea.”

“I wasn’t exactly advertising.”

“You never did. Bruce, you’re saving the world.”

“You should never trust what you see on TV.”

Betty sniffled, the obvious aftermath of crying. “You’re saving the world, Bruce.”

“That's debatable.”

“What's the debate?”

“We’re building a giant arc reactor,” said Bruce. “We’ll see what it does.”

“Okay,” said Betty. “What can the university do to help?”

“Are you the university now? I mean, I heard you got promoted, but—”

“What can we do to help?”

"The debate is whether to do it at all." Bruce scratched the back of his neck. “You know, there are some people who don't actually want the day stopped at—”

“Wow,” said Betty. “You are the same sarcastic bastard you ever were. You’re not going to protect me by not letting me help.”

Bruce swallowed another smile, because she never let him get away with anything, ever. “I’ll have Darcy get in touch with you.”

“Darcy?”

“One of the lab techs,” Bruce said, and let himself smile.

“Okay.” Betty paused. “I know you don’t want to hear this.”

“You’re going to tell me anyway.”

Betty took a deep breath. “I’m proud of you. I am so, so proud. I’m proud to have known—to know you.”

Realizing he was squeezing the phone again, Bruce made himself loosen his hand. “I—I pretty much always want to hear that,” he said. “It’s a—it’s this flaw I have.”

“I’m proud of you,” Betty said. “I love you.”

“Bets.” Bruce’s voice was raw.

“I love you. Do you remember what I used to say?”

“Bets. Please.”

“I’ll tell you until you believe me,” said Betty. “And you would say?”

She waited, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t.

“I’ll always say it,” Betty said. “I’ll always mean it.”

She waited again, and Bruce thought about how easily he could destroy the eighteen-wheeler behind him, the framework for the reactor, the helicopters in the sky. He could destroy this whole field, and barely blink an eye.

He’d already done it once.

“Thanks for taking the call,” Betty said.

When he could finally speak, Bruce’s voice was strangled. “Thanks for calling.”

Bruce took the phone away from his face, and for a long moment, just looked at it. Then, carefully, he pressed “Off,” and looked up. The construction going on around him still looked like swathes of blackness cut by sprays of sparks—coils of steam and molten lead, people moving hurriedly to and fro. Directly in front of it, not two feet in front of him, stood Tony Stark.

“Who was that?” said Tony. He didn’t have his armor on for some reason, though he usually did as he worked on the reactor.

“An old girlfriend,” said Bruce, just as though he’d had a bunch of girlfriends, as if he’d gotten over the fact that she was no longer his.

“Uh-huh.” Tony didn’t seem impressed. “Think you can fold yourself up any smaller?”

Bruce looked around. Somehow he’d found a corner between the vats they’d brought in for the cooling equipment. His knees were still pulled up against his chest. Bruce put a hand on the ground and started to stand, but Tony grasped his arm and pulled him up the rest of the way. “The elusive Miss Ross,” he said, and didn’t let go of Bruce’s arm.

“She’s not elusive,” said Bruce, backed up against the tanks. “And she’s a doctor.”

“Not elusive, okay.” Tony’s eyes searched his face. “How come you look like you’ve gone ten rounds against a sack of bricks?”

“Well,” said Bruce. “I’m stuck in this time loop, and—”

“Don’t.” Tony put a hand on the middle of his chest and pressed him back. “Don’t play defense with me.”

“You want me to play offense?”

“I’d like that, yes.” Sometimes Bruce wondered if Tony even blinked. “I would love that.”

“Okay,” said Bruce, and pushed him. Hard. Sort of. Hard enough to get Tony out of his space, at least.

“Good!” As Bruce turned away, and Tony grabbed his arm. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Wresting his arm away, Bruce said, “Doesn’t no mean anything to you?”

“No,” said Tony. “Oh, wait. Sometimes it means yes.”

“What’s your problem?”

“What’s yours?” Tony looked interested. “Are you angry?”

“I’m . . .” Bruce took a deep breath, swallowed. Pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just leave me alone.”

“Not gonna happen,” Tony said, but he didn’t move.

“Why?” Bruce spread his hands. “What have I done that makes you think it’s alright to invade my privacy?”

Tony had this light, quick tone that sounded utterly bland. He used it when he was angry and when he was taking apart machines—which meant he was delighted; he used it when he was being clever and he used it when he was taking apart human beings. “It’s not what you did,” said Tony. “It’s what she did.”

“She? Who—”

“The non-elusive Doctor Elizabeth Karen Ross.”

“What?”

“She left you,” said Tony.

“What?” Bruce’s brows shot up. “That’s what you think? Is that what your—”

“She did leave you,” said Tony. “You comfort yourself with the idea that you left her. Okay. True. But she didn’t come after you.”

Bruce stared at him in disbelief. “What are you, five?”

“No. What are you? Twelve?” Tony let that sink in, just for a moment. “Second the shit hits the fan, you run away, all by yourself, lick your wounds where no one can see you? No one’s allowed to follow you because you might do something constructive with your life and what you did to yourself; is that it?”

“That was over ten years ago,” Bruce said.

Something flickered in Tony’s face. “Then you did it again, last year. You tried to do it again, yesterday. And I don’t know what it was that convinced you to come back, because when I talked to you yesterday—”

“Tony.” Bruce tried to say it gently. “At some point in your life you’re going to need to respect the fact that sometimes people need time. Sometimes people leave. Sometimes people need to be alone, even if—”

“Yeah, that’s nice.” For a moment, Tony turned his head, gazing at the construction going on around them. Once Bruce opened his mouth, he swung back. “I’m not going to.”

“What?”

“Leave. Ever.”

Something squeezed in Bruce’s chest. “Tony—”

“You don’t need to be left alone,” Tony said quickly. “You don’t need to be all by yourself. You need to be free, doing the things you love, with people who understand you. The world needs that too.”

“Tony,” Bruce said again. “You can’t just . . . decide what I need. That’s something only I can do.”

“You’re not doing a good enough job. You keep—”

“You don’t get to decide—”

“You know what you’re like?” Tony tilted his head, as though seeing him for the first time. “You are one of those sad little waifs in a Christmas pageant. You stand out on the street, barefoot in the snow, looking through a window where there’s—I don’t even know. Fruitcake and shit. You know what you need, Bruce. You need to come inside; you just won’t let yourself.”

Bruce looked around. Ten yards away, a crew was pouring a vat of lead. Farther beyond that, another crew was welding two giant pieces of metal together.

“Not inside there.” Tony touched Bruce’s chest. “Inside here. More than a million people are invested in this idea. They believe in it. You just stand there outside with your face plastered against the glass, and would it kill you to believe in something?”

“I’ll believe in the tooth fairy,” said Bruce, “if it’ll get you off my back.”

Tony put his hands in his pockets. “The tooth fairy is a personal friend of Steve’s. Don’t insult him.”

“You don’t get to blame Betty.”

Tony held his eyes in that unnerving way.

“You don’t,” Bruce said. “I think that if she could have found me, she would have. And if she had, I would have destroyed her, and that would have destroyed me. The thought of her, alive in the world, safe . . .” He looked down at his hands. “It keeps me going. You want me to believe in something—I believe in Betty Ross.”

For another long moment, Tony was completely still. Then he nodded sharply. “Congrats.”

“Also,” said Bruce, “don’t have a fit every time on of my exes calls.”

Hands still in his pocket, Tony stood on the balls of his feet for a moment, then rocked back on his heels. “She’s your only ex.”

“Just don’t.”

Jaw clenching, Tony lifted up again, and settled back. “Why?”

“Because you don’t get to—”

“Why is she your only ex?”

“Tony—”

“I get it with Steve.” Tony tilted his head again. “I don’t with you. I know you can have sex. I checked.”

“I . . .” Bruce wiped his hands on his thighs, dug his thumbs in. “How could you possibly know that?”

“One of them ‘fessed up.”

Two women. There had been two since Betty, in the last ten years, and one of them was dead. The other . . . “You’re bluffing.”

“But you can,” said Tony. “Why don’t you?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“It’s not.” Tony’s eyes moved all over him. “It’s everyone’s.”

“Okay.” Bruce looked around. “That’s nice. I don’t actually have to—”

He started walking away, but Tony grabbed his arm again, this time much more lightly. When Bruce stopped, Tony immediately let him go, saying, “Don’t you think you would be easier—happier—if you just . . . let go? You are strung tighter than a bullet in the barrel.”

Bruce stared at him. “Okay, you do realize the problem with the metaphor you just made.”

“Tell me you wouldn’t feel better if you got laid.”

Bruce just kept staring at him. It was like Tony was some strange animal in a zoo. “I wouldn’t feel better if I got laid.”

“I always feel terrific after I get laid.”

“Uh, okay, but I’m actually not you; I’m this whole other person with—”

“No, you’re not.”

“No?”

“No,” said Tony, and put his hands in his pockets.

“Okay.” Bruce squinted. “Were you by any chance raised by wild dogs or something? Because I’m getting this feeling like you’re not actually a human who understands human things.”

“That!” Tony rocked on the balls of his feet again. “That right there. You hit it. Nail on the head. Nut on the—whatever. That’s the problem; it’s a social construct, and it’s not human. It’s not—biological. It’s invented.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“I’m talking about the social construct of sex.”

Tony actually totally was from a zoo. He was like some other species of ape.

“Humans are biological creatures,” said Tony. “They have biological needs—sex is just one of them. We’re horny like we’re hungry; we need sex like we need to urinate; do we talk about it that way? No. Do we treat it that way? No.

“You think all that Freud/Oedipus stuff is just for shits and grins? It’s true. Sex is everywhere; the human body doesn’t differentiate. You want sex with your mother, your brother, your sister—your lovers, but also your friends. Coworkers, the girl taking tickets at the movie theater and your physics teacher from ninth grade. You want it. You want it so bad; you’re just not going to say it because that would ruin everything—family, friendships, your career—this fragile little bullshit invention we call life. Just a social construct of repression. Denial. Self-sacrifice. What for? That’s the part I don’t get.”

“Does Pepper get it?”

“You can leave Pepper out of it.”

Bruce raised his brows. “According to you, I really can’t.”

Tony opened his mouth, then closed it. He hadn’t been going to reply; it was just like he was taking what Bruce had said out of the air, and swallowing it. “Pepper,” he began, then stopped. He looked around at the machinery, then turned back. “You’re never going to catch me going Oedipal, and it’s not because I’m not. It’s because I have a—” He grimaced. “A duty, a responsibility. So does Pepper. What I’m saying is that if this world was a freer place—a better place, duty and responsibility wouldn’t be a barrier to being who you really are.”

“To being Oedipal.”

Tony grimaced again. “You know what I meant.”

“I’m not sure I really do.”

Tony held his gaze for a long time—so long, that Bruce had to look away, and it wasn’t until Bruce looked down at his own hands that he realized he was touching his knuckles. “Yes, you do,” Tony said softly. “You always do.”

“Yeah.” Bruce shoved his hands in his pockets. “In theory. In practice, that’s just fucked up.”

“Only because we’ve been indoctrinated to believe—”

“Right, because societies that encourage incest flourish?”

“I’m not talking about incest; I’m talking about—”

“Yes, you are!” Shaking his head, Bruce almost laughed in disbelief. Somehow his hands had left his pockets. “Tony, there are some things that are better left unsaid. There are some things people need to keep to themselves. That makes society better. That makes it safe.”

Tony’s lips twisted. “Safety is overrated.”

“No. It’s really not.”

“Fine. There still needs to be a place where you can be who you are—without judgment. Without laws, without—”

“You can’t have that in any kind of—”

“The privacy of your own home.” Tony put his hands in his pockets too. “You can have that in the privacy of your own home.”

“What are you—Tony, that’s not even what we were talking—”

“It’s what I’m talking about. Come and live with me.”

“What?”

Someone in one of the construction crews glanced over. Realizing he’d raised his voice, Bruce took a deep breath.

Tony appeared unfazed. “I want you to live with me. When this is over, when we get done with the reactor. Tomorrow. I want you to live with me in Stark Tower.”

“I—what, so we can have orgies?”

“Is that on the table?”

Blindly, Bruce turned away.

“I’m not talking about sex anymore,” Tony said, in that light, quick way.

Bruce kept on going. When Tony touched him, he wrenched his arm away.

“I think you know I wouldn’t be opposed to orgies. Especially if you were involved, but—calm down.”

Somehow Bruce had stopped. He took a deep breath, then another.

“Okay, breathe—air; it’s good—you—” Leaning in, Tony looked directly into Bruce’s eyes. “You alright? Need a mary jane? Something to drink?” Tony leaned back. “Don’t act like I’m shocking you. You’re so much quicker than this.”

“Please,” said Bruce. “I don’t want—”

“I said, calm down. I’m not asking for sex. I only ask for that when the answer is an enthusiastic yes; I’m asking you to live in a, quite frankly, awesome apartment that has everything you could ever want. Plus a smoothie machine. I’m asking you to do what you were born to do; I’m giving you everything you need to do it. I’m asking you to stay somewhere where you know that you’re safe, and there are people you can’t hurt, who would do anything to—so that the next time the world needs us, you can say yes; you don’t have to doubt; you can’t run away. Because they will need us. They’ll need us again after this. They’ll need us again and again and again, and we have to be there. We have to.

“Tony—”

“Steve can visit all the time. Play chess. Go nuts. I don’t care; just as long as you do it—at the Tower.”

“I—”

“Don’t say no.”

“Tony—”

“You know how you always say yes?” Tony moved closer, and he had already been close. Now he was toe to toe with Bruce, and Bruce didn’t think he could—“Don’t think I hadn’t noticed,” said Tony. “You would tie your shoes right now if I told you to, wouldn’t you?”

Bruce had to actually turn his head to look away. “Yes.”

“Come live with me.”

“I—”

“Come live at the Tower, Bruce.”

“Tony.” Bruce did look at him then. He tried to put his hands on Tony’s shoulders, but they wouldn’t go; instead his right hand instinctively slid down, covering the glow on Tony’s t-shirt. Tony’s eyes instantly went dark. “No,” said Bruce.

“Ah,” Tony said, and pulled away.

“Tony.” Bruce tried to reach for him again.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Please,” said Bruce. “Don’t—”

“I’m not upset.”

“This isn’t about—”

“It was just a suggestion.”

“This isn’t about me getting turned into a kid.”

Tony shut his mouth.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you.” Bruce swallowed, and tried to remember how Betty made him feel: like he was at least good enough to say, I’m sorry. “I should have told you. The de-aging was your fault, but it was my fault I couldn’t trust you. The trust issue was never about you.” Tony was staring at him blankly, so Bruce added, “Ever. I never should have suggested otherwise. I’m sorry.”

Tony stared at him for a long time. “Well, that’s . . .” He glanced around at the site, then turned back to Bruce. “You know what, I don’t give a shit about apologies. Do the right thing when it matters. That’s what counts.”

“I’m trying.”

“Trying isn’t worth shit.”

“Tony,” Bruce said. “This is the best that I can do.”

Tony looked away. “You should go back to work.” He turned back to face him. “Unless you’re expecting more phone calls from your fans.”

“Tony—”

“Fine. You’re fine. Your best, that’s all you can do.”

Tony turned around, and left him standing in the dark.

*

On the Forty-fourth Fourth of July, everyone returned to constructing the reactor with renewed vigor, and they were thirty-eight minutes off schedule when they day reset. On the forty-fifth Fourth of July, they were sixteen minutes off schedule. On the forty-sixth Fourth of July, they were twenty-one minutes off schedule. On the forty-seventh day, they were six minutes off schedule.

Pepper projected that on the forty-eighth day, the reactor would be completed in twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes.

Steve had not promised any set length of time during his initial press conference, and Pepper had been wary of pinning down a specific day the reactor would be done. She feared that if they failed that day, it would be impossible to convince everyone to come and try it again the next day. Fury had predicted that at the end of thirty days, most people would begin to lose patience.

Pepper was still not promising success, but her projections were posted online by Janet for all to see, and the site had been moving at a frenzied place since the Hulk attack. If anything, the Hulk had given them the spur they needed to work as hard as possible, and finally end the day. The final day, the projection said, would be ten days after Enrique Pym’s experiment proved successful, thirty-one days after work had begun in earnest on the site, and forty-eight days after the first Fourth of July, 2013.

Sometimes, Bruce found the idea that they could actually get this done in a day pretty hard to believe. Other times, though, he went outside, saw the construction happening, and felt awe as something almost tangible.

The construction of the arc reactor had become a carefully orchestrated concert, with thousands of people and machines moving in a strange kind of tandem. People moved around each other with a kind of grace impossible in most candid situations, because everyone knew where everyone else was. Most of the people here had been doing this for a total of thirty days, over and over, and some of them had begun preparing for it even longer ago. Everyone knew the stakes of this ballet, and everyone pushed to dance their hardest.

Some of the machines constructed everyday were machines the world had never seen before—machines designed by Tony, by CERN, by Weyland-Yutani. Some of these machines existed for no other purpose than to make part of the fabrication process shorter, and some of them existed for no other purpose than to shorten the fabrication of another machine, which would shorten the fabrication of another machine.

Pepper’s idea of “designing a new oven” had developed a million iterations: a new chemical had been designed by FuturePharm to speed the process of building a machine that would speed the process of building another machine that would speed the process of arranging the wires at the center of the holhraum for the Z pinch; a brand new process had been invented by OCP to speed the process of the fabrication of a containment chamber consisting of an alloy invented by Tony, which would hold the plasma resulting from the pinch. And then twenty people had to tear down the cathodes using twenty backhoes so the reactor shell could go up where the Z machine had been, and just getting those backhoes on the site was a nightmare in and of itself.

The part that always took Bruce’s breath away, however, was Steve.

There were men and women everywhere, doing their jobs, performing incredible feats of orchestration, careful planning, intelligence, strength, coordination, engineering. Then there was Steve, who instead of letting them waste twenty minutes when one of the cables snapped, simply scrambled up the crane itself, slid down one of the cables that was still attached, and onto the unbalanced pipe. He caught the broken cable, brought it back to one of the viable cables, even as the pipe continued to veer wildly against his weight and the uneven cables. Then he proceeded to climb back up a viable cable, hauling the broken one with him as he went—which, as the broken cable became taut, meant he was also hauling the pipe.

The pipe was roughly the size of an SUV—and there was Steve, crawling up this line with that whole thing tugged up behind him, until Iron Man got done with what he’d been doing on the other side of the site, and lifted the whole damn pipe. Iron Man had a suit, but Steve was just a man—a man who at best, simply had the strength of one and a half very strong men, but who sometimes acted like he had the strength of ten. It was not lifting the pipe that was impressive—it was that he had thought to do it. It was that he had run up there, and he hadn’t been afraid, and he’d been willing to do all that, instead of losing the extra fifteen minutes having had to set down the pipe and replace the cable would have cost them.

When things like that happened—which they did all the time, which they had, ever since construction had begun—Bruce would sometimes look for Pepper, and wonder if the accident had happened on purpose. It would have been a great way to keep up morale, seeing Captain America—who, more than anyone, besides maybe Darcy Lewis, was the face of this venture—get down in the trenches and perform heroic feats. Every time it happened, people’s spirits rallied; they became that much more determined to lay the groundwork for another day, when they’d be doing this in quintuple time.

But in those final days, Bruce final saw those feats for what they were. They weren’t orchestrated. They weren’t for effect. They were just Steve.

Bruce couldn’t help thinking, when he realized that, that they’d been wasting time. They’d all been wasting time. They hadn’t needed to invent that many machines to expedite the construction process. They could have just reinvented the supersoldier serum. With one hundred Steves, they wouldn’t need half of this machinery.

One hundred Iron Mans would have been impossible: they’d need to be constructed every single day. Because the armor was relatively small, only a few people would have been able to work on it at a time, or you would need to invent the assembly system that could build them all quickly. That would have taken time; inventing the machines to expedite the construction of the assembly factory would have taken more time, and so on. To make a hundred Steves, all you needed to do was know the formula.

Bruce tried not to think about it.

Instead, he thought about how the reactor had brought so many people together. It was visible out there on the work site—the camaraderie among some of the crews, the way they worked together. Even in the control room, they’d come to work well together. Gail never really stopped being afraid of Bruce; Bruce got the impression that Jesse never stopped being pissed off at him, but both of them never worked any less hard because of it.

Bruce had gotten to know new people through the project, and so many others had come together. Stark Industries had formed alliances through Pepper; Steve had solidified his role with the military and current administration in DC. Janet was famous now for something more than a line of purses, and Darcy, Jane, and Erik Selvig’s role in saving the world in Puente Antigua had been brought to light. Every single one of them had been contacted by friends and loved ones—everyone, except Steve.

Maybe Natasha never did either; Bruce didn’t know. But with Steve it was conspicuous. Tony and Bruce didn’t have families, but as it turned out they still had friends, people who thought of them when they were far away, when the world was ending. Everyone loved Steve. Everyone thought of Steve when the world was ending, but it was because they expected him to save them; it wasn’t to check in with him that they called; it wasn’t to tell him one last time that they loved him.

Sometimes Bruce didn’t know what to do with himself, when watching Steve be the man he was. He thought about what Betty had said to him, you tell the people you love that you love them, and he wondered if Steve knew. Tony gave Bruce so many reasons to work on the project—logical reasons for why this was best, logical reasons to lay his objections to rest, to ignore the things his conscience told him could make giving in dangerous. With Tony, surrender always felt like defeat.

With Steve, surrender felt like grace.

*

On the morning of the forty-eighth Fourth of July, Bruce opened his eyes at 4:47 am. He got out of bed, showered, shaved, got dressed, made coffee, then went to the roof to wait for Natasha.

In his Manhattan apartment, Steve put on the Captain America uniform and got on a motorcycle. In Stark Tower, Tony got dressed (or whatever it was Tony did; Bruce didn’t know if Tony began the day in bed) and got the metal and the crystals out of the Chitauri flier, then put on the Iron Man suit. In a hotel in the Upper East Side, a janitor went to stand guard at the door of David Esten’s room. Five minutes later, a retired cop and two hikers from Australia joined him.

At Fort Hamiliton, the regiments got out of bed, dressed in regulation uniforms, and got in army vehicles headed toward the site. Volunteers who woke near Floyd Bennett got out of bed, got dressed, and began helping set up the perimeter.

On the helicarrier, Special-Agent Maria Hill got in a jet and headed toward New Jersey. Somewhere in the larger Pennsylvania area, Darcy Lewis got in a car. In Örebro, Erik Selvig was already pushing code; in fifteen different countries across the world, scientists were adding to it.

By 5:23 am, Iron Man had delivered the first run of materials to the work site. At 5:32, a Stark Industries tech in research and development was cutting the metal Tony had left in one of the labs in Stark Tower into fine, thin plates.

At 5:46, Bruce arrived on site with Natasha. He went straight to the control room, as he usually did, and started writing the regulation software for the Z pinch. In the air, Tony was still hauling equipment from Stark Tower, while helicopters, jets, and the helicarrier brought still more equipment. All across the eastern seaboard, companies put raw materials and machines on trucks, trains, helicopters, and planes, and sent them in the direction of New York City.

James Rhodes was on a jet from Washington DC, and in Ohio, Jane wrote code on her laptop while waiting for a jet from S.H.I.E.L.D. In L.A., one of the fastest jets in the world had just been loaded to the hilt with niobium-titanium. Three more jets were en route from Vancouver, Tucson, and Salt Lake City carrying further rare supplies. An engineer from Egypt, three more from Switzerland, and another from Brazil were all on planes. In South Korea, thirty workers from a factory went to go load specialized equipment onto a jet.

Fifteen minutes later, Clint Barton arrived, checked in at the control room, and disappeared. The movers Pepper had hired for the Stark Tower Fourth of July barbeque arrived with the Flux Accelerator, and Tony hauled in another robot from Stark Tower. Twenty backhoes lined up along the north entrance to the park; three cranes maneuvered along the west side, and a long line of trucks made their way between tanks to the east. Beyond the tanks, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN, among others, had pitched their tents, and The New York Times, USA Today, and The Daily Bugle were already conducting interviews with volunteers, security, and passers-by.

By 7:04 am, three more scientists had arrived in Stark Tower and begun work modifying Tony’s pre-existing vacuum chamber. At 7:22 am, Pepper arrived at the air field with her mother and Special Agent Maria Hill. At 7:36, Janet Van Dyne arrived. At 7:38, Simon Williams arrived in the control room; at 7:43, Bruce finished the regulation protocols on the Z machine; at 7:44, he left the control room with one of the guards (Clint following somewhere unseen) to help one hundred and eighty-five technicians wire all the cathodes for the pinch.

At 8:02, the palladium finally made it there. At 8:19, the palladium had already been transported, melted, and reformed into wires, and at 8:19 and forty-two seconds, Thor sent a bolt of lightning into a series of cathodes, which relayed the electricity, folded it in on itself, and rushed it on a z axis toward the holhraum in the center with such power that the palladium in the center disintegrated. At 8:19 and fifty-eight seconds, they had enough vibranium to power the reactor.

At 9:31 am, Bruce completed an algorithm for the lattice for the Casimir system. At 9:32 and three seconds, lasers in Stark Tower cut the lattice into the metal, which had previously been flattened into plates. At 9:34 am the plates were installed into the vacuum chamber, which had already been successfully modified. At 9:39 am, the vacuum chamber was flown by helicopter to Floyd Bennett field. At 9:56 am, the vacuum chamber arrived at the site and installation into the Flux Accelerator began.

At 11:17, Darcy Lewis arrived, and began live blogging, tweeting, taking pictures, checking in with interns, and trouble-shooting. At 11:29, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes arrived and double-checked control-room security. At 11:53 he took a tour of the perimeter; at 1:06 he come back and do another survey of the control room again. At 12:02, an intern distributed pretzels and water to all the scientists in the control room, which they could easily eat while working. 12:12 pm, Jane foster arrived.

By 1:12 pm, Bruce had written the algorithms for Tony’s nanobots to build a framework to direct the negative energy away from the wormhole. By 3:41 pm, he began work writing algorithms to translate the Chitauri crystals. By 4:18 pm, a basic torus for the reactor had been erected. By 7:32 pm, Bruce had installed the crystals on the Flux Accelerator. At 8:55 pm, a jet arrived on-site from Seoul, Korea. Using the components in the jet, a team assembled the Sub-Assembly Tool, which was twenty-two meters high, and would assemble components weighing a combined mass of one thousand, two hundred and fifty tons—one vacuum vessel sector, two poloidal field coils, and thermal shields.

By 10:12 pm, the poloidal field coils had been constructed, completing the reactor’s magnetic confinement system. By 12:47 am, the cryostat to shelter the vacuum inside the reactor was complete. By 2:31 am, the in-pit assembly tool was disassembled by a series of bridge cranes, emptying the middle of the torus for the coils, the heating components, and the blankets that surrounded them. By 3:18 am, the coils had been lifted into the center by synchronous use of four universal lifting beams connected to three hundred and seventy-eight ton crane hooks.

At 3:59 am, each vacuum vessel port component had been completely assembled, and were aligned by the dedicated assembly tools, equipped with high-precision hydraulic units and motors.

At 4:26 am, all programming for the reactor was complete. Bruce, Jane, Gail Chiang, Simon Williams, Jesse Wright, Diego Rodriguez, Anand Bahl and five other scientists came out of the control room to watch the rest of construction, flanked by twenty armored guards, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, and Agent Clint Barton.

At 4:41 am and eighteen seconds, Thor mounted a metal staircase that would put him directly over the tokamak. At 4:41 am and twenty-one seconds, the reactor was completed with seven minutes and six seconds to spare. At 4:41 am and twenty-three seconds, the reactor went live, glowing a spectacular cerulean blue. Three seconds after that, Thor held Mjölnir aloft.

At 4:41 am and twenty-three seconds Bruce heard thunder, and lightning came crashing down into Thor’s hammer. The thunder drowned out the clink in the glass as the vacuum chamber in the Flux Accelerator broke. Then the air above the reactor shimmered, and the world was so bright that Bruce could not look.

Then a hole opened in their universe. At first, it just looked like a very clear patch of night sky, with blue lightning around the edges, and then it just kept getting bigger, bigger, bigger. Bruce could see the whole Milky Way; he could see the bulk of the center of the galaxy directly in the center of Sagittarius; he could see everything, until he realized something was wrong with Thor.

The lightning flowed directly through the hammer, but then straight down into his arm, his body, and Thor’s body was spasming. He was going to fall.

Then Steve was running up the staircase, faster than Bruce had ever seen a human move. Just as Thor started to fall, Steve caught him with one hand, and held Mjölnir aloft in the other. For one moment, Bruce could see him: Steve, outlined in black and blue, lightning running through him too.

Then the world went blue.

*

When Bruce opened his eyes, he was walked down a metal hall. He tried to turn around, but he couldn’t. Men walked on either side of him, keeping an even pace. He could feel their heavy tread, feel them looming over him, but he couldn’t see them, couldn’t move his head. When he tried to yell, he couldn’t open his mouth. The corridor yawned long and metal, like the chamber of a gun.

Bruce scratched the back of his head, but it wasn’t he who moved his arm; he could feel himself doing it, but it wasn’t of his own volition.

“Something wrong?” one of the men beside him said.

Bruce glanced at him, but he wasn’t the one moving his neck. The man beside him held a gun, was dressed like a soldier, but Bruce didn’t even startle. “Yeah,” Bruce’s voice said, but it wasn’t Bruce. “My head feels weird.”

“The chip?” the man on the other side said. He also had a gun.

There were more men walking behind them; Bruce could hear their footsteps. He couldn’t turn to look, but he was willing to bet they all had guns.

“I don’t know,” said Bruce, and scratched his head again. “It’s like a buzzing.”

The men kept walking, and then they reached a tall, metal door. They opened it, and Bruce had been in places like this before. He’d seen them: steel and solid metal, a way to seal and detach the room from the rest of the building. It was the kind of cage you built to hold a beast, and everything in Bruce revolted. They were going to tie him down, take his blood, unleash the monster and then make more—he had to run.

Run.

Bruce scratched his head.

“Still buzzing?” one of the men said.

“It’s fine,” said Bruce. The guards moved away. Bruce turned around, and saw Natasha. She was in a different uniform, her hair more brown than he remembered, but it was definitely Natasha, and Bruce flooded with relief. One of the guards spoke with her briefly. She glanced at Bruce and nodded; the guard left.

She came over to Bruce, and Bruce couldn’t say anything, couldn’t ask what was going on, couldn’t reach out to touch her. He couldn’t even blink. “Your head?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” Bruce said again.

“You need to talk to Stark?”

Bruce shook his head. “It’s not the chip.”

Natasha didn’t seem convinced. “I’ll have him take a look.”

“Right now?”

She shook her head, and pressed a button on a console that must control the room. “Open it.”

A different set of doors slid open on some smooth mechanical device, just like Star Trek, and Clint walked in.

Bruce tried to speak again, but he couldn’t. It was like being inside a movie; he could see everything around him, but not act. The room that Clint had come from was a small metal place, with just a bench to sit on. There was only one reason Bruce could think of that a prison cell connected to a lion’s den. Furthermore there was only one reason that you opened it.

Dinner time.

“You know who this is,” Natasha said.

Clint’s eyes flicked over Bruce; then he turned his gaze to Natasha. “I do,” said Clint.

“Then you’ll answer my question,” said Natasha.

Bruce was still just standing there, and he couldn’t make himself move.

“Do you work for S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Natasha asked.

“What’s that?” said Clint.

“Who is the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D?”

“Big Bird,” said Clint.

“Who is Agent?”

Clint frowned. “You mean Secret Agent Man? I don’t know; isn’t it a secret?”

“Who’s the double operative?”

Clint glanced at Bruce.

“Who’s the double operative?” said Natasha.

“Well.” Clint smiled at Bruce, and Bruce couldn’t see Natasha’s face, because his head wasn’t angled toward her. “That would be me,” said Clint.

“You disappoint me,” said Natasha.

Clint turned a cocky grin on her. “I disappoint so many people.”

“You’ve made your own choice.”

Bruce still couldn’t see her, but Natasha must have pressed a button, because he heard a brief mechanical whir, then metal. When she spoke again, it was over an intercom, and Bruce knew that she had left the room and sealed it. “Banner,” Natasha said. “Clint Barton is an enemy of the state. Destroy him.”

And Bruce could feel himself getting very, very angry.

*

When Bruce opened his eyes, he was sitting in a bar. He was bringing a gin and tonic to his lips, and he couldn’t stop himself. It hit his mouth, a sweet, tart tang that Bruce had never tasted before. Sometimes he had beer, a little wine, but never hard liquor, not even in cocktails, except for twice. Both those times, he had still been with Betty.

But the gin and tonic just kept going down like water, without a burn at all. Bruce set the glass down neatly, turned the glass, and waved down the bar-tender.

“Good lecture,” someone said, and sat down beside him.

Bruce didn’t even look up. “Hey,” he said to the bartender.

“Really, very extraordinary,” the person beside him went on, and at last Bruce looked over.

He knew this man. He knew this man from—from a picture somewhere, a book, newspaper articles, but Bruce’s eyes weren’t squinting in recognition. He could feel himself staring blankly, and that was when Bruce realized he was looking at Ho Yinsin, who was dead. Ho Yinsin, who had clipped a car battery to Tony Stark’s heart, and died to save him—that Ho Yinsin.

This Ho Yinsin, however, looked older than the picture in Tony’s file, which had been taken just before Yinsin’s capture. Yinsin had been a prisoner a year, but this Yinsin looked even older than that. At least five years older.

“I’m a great admirer of your work,” said Yinsin.

“Yeah,” said Bruce. The bartender finally appeared. “Another,” Bruce said, tapping his glass.

Yinsin said something very polite in German to the bartender, and the bartender disappeared. Yinsin turned back to Bruce. “Your view of Compton scattering in particular is eye-opening.”

“What do you want?” said Bruce.

Yinsin looked at him a moment. “I merely wished to state my admiration. One scientist to another.”

Bruce barked a laugh, as though one of the greatest men of modern physics was not sitting beside him. “Great. Fabulous. One failure to another.”

Yinsin merely smiled. “Then you do know who I am.”

Bruce snorted.

“Why do you wish to discover the supersoldier serum?” Yinsin asked.

Bruce spared him a glance. “Same reason anyone does.”

“That’s not true,” said Yinsin. “Why do you wish to discover the supersoldier serum?”

“What are you? My spirit guide?”

“Many men have searched for it,” Yinsin went on. “But you—even after the death of your colleague, Elizabeth Ross—”

The bartender brought the drinks. Bruce took a sip of his before he said, “She wasn’t my colleague.”

“I meant your partner—”

“She was my wife,” said Bruce, and downed the rest of his glass.

“I am sorry,” said Yinsin. “Truly I am. But it’s your very dedication to this cause that makes me think—have you ever thought that you were more than this?”

“More than a failed scientist with nothing more than a lecture circuit to show for it? Oh, no, Doctor Yinsin, sir, this is totally where I belong. Hey!” Bruce waved at the bartender. “Hey, you!”

“You do think you could become great,” said Yinsin. “Did you think that it would land in your lap?”

“Hey, bartender,” Bruce called.

“There comes a day when a man must ask himself,” said Yinsin, “’what kind of man will I be? Do I have what it takes to become truly great? To become more than a man?’”

“Yeah,” said Bruce. “That day came."

"Then what happened?"

"It passed.”

*

When Bruce opened his eyes, he was lying in a bed. When he tried to move, he found his arm were bound. He could move his head though, and when he did he saw Natasha, wearing slacks and a pretty blouse and looking down at him with a furrowed brow. When he moved his lips, he found that he could talk. “Natasha.”

Natasha smiled. “Hello, Bruce.”

Bruce moved his head from side to side. He could only see fluorescent lights, white walls, a metal table beside the bed. “What—where am I?”

“St. Elizabeth’s,” said Natasha. “You’ve had quite a spell, haven’t you?”

“St. Elizabeth’s?”

“Yes, Bruce.” Natasha just kept smiling. “In Washington D.C.”

“Why—what, what happened?”

“That’s okay, Bruce.” Natasha sat down in a metal folding chair beside the bed. “How about you just tell me what you remember?”

“The arc reactor—”

“That’s the device you believe that Tony Stark built; is that correct?”

Bruce looked at her, and realized he must still be dreaming; that was not Natasha; this wasn’t—

“Of course you belong here,” Natasha said soothingly. “You’ve just had a couple bad spells, and I’m here to help you remember them.”

“Bad spells?”

“Sometimes you just get a little confused,” said Natasha.

Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. He could do that, despite the cuffs strapping his wrists to the bed. “How am I confused?”

“Let’s talk about what you remember.”

“How am I confused?”

“Please,” said Natasha, “don’t get angry. You know things just get so much worse if you’re angry. I’ll have to call Doctor Fury, and neither of us enjoy that.”

“Doctor Fury?”

“Yes, Bruce.”

Bruce tried to sit up again, struggling against the bed.

“Come now,” Natasha said. “This is the most lucid period we’ve had in quite some time; we don’t want to ruin it by—”

“Who are you?”

“Calm down, Bruce. You know who I am.”

“Who are you?”

Natasha looked sad, then. “I’m Doctor Natalie Rushman. I’m your doctor, Bruce. I’ve been your doctor since you transferred here.”

“Transferred?”

Natasha looked even more disappointed. “You know this. You were at the Psychiatric Institute under Doctor Ross, until Doctor Fury—”

“Doctor Ross?”

“It’s alright.” Natasha went back to her soothing tone. “He’s not here now.”

“Why am I in a psychiatric ward?”

“Bruce—”

“Tell me. Natalie.”

Natasha pressed her lips together—an expression with which Bruce was so familiar, that blank, repressed, deciding-whether-to-tell-him stare. “You’re under the delusion that you created a green monster in a scientific experiment,” she said at last. “You think they did experiments in the forties that created supersoldiers. You’ve wrapped real people into your fantasies—you think Tony Stark, the C.E.O. of Stark Industries is—”

“Tony,” said Bruce.

“Tony Stark is a very busy man,” Natasha said.

“No,” said Bruce. “Get Tony—”

“You were doing so well.”

“Tony—”

“Bruce,” Natasha said sadly. “Tony Stark has no idea who you are.”

*

When Bruce opened his eyes, he was outside the control room of the reactor. Steve and Thor were on the ground. Steve, looking a little singed, but otherwise okay, was still holding Mjölnir. Thor lay by his side on the ground. Whether Bruce had been dreaming, or something else, he was now awake.

“Oh my God,” Jane cried, and started running toward Thor.

“Jane,” Darcy said, and started running toward Jane.

Bruce looked around at the other scientists, who looked sort of dazed. Clint stood some little distance from them, his bow out, but not any arrows. When he met Bruce’s gaze, Bruce flinched.

Clint Barton is an enemy of the state, Bruce heard Natasha say.

Iron Man landed near Steve, Thor, and Jane, and Bruce started heading toward them. Clint met him on the way. “What the hell happened?” Clint asked.

“I don’t—” Bruce started to say, and then a roar went up around the site. Bruce had never heard so many human voices, but it sounded like a mob; it sounded like a nightmare; it sounded like—

“Hey.” Clint didn’t touch him, but he got in his space, so Bruce had to look at his face. Clint was smiling, and he had this ridiculously boyish grin; it crinkled up his eyes and—“We’re okay,” Clint said.

Bruce looked around him, and everyone was screaming. Steve looked at him, and smiled. Bruce started to say, “What—”

Tony was smiling too.

“It’s four forty in the morning,” Darcy said.

When Bruce looked around him again, he realized that all the screams were cheers, and some of them were tears of joy. Today was finally tomorrow.

“Thank God, it’s Friday,” Tony said.

Steve grinned at him. “Thank God.”

Chapter Text

It was 3:28 on a Monday afternoon when the phone rang. Bruce went to the cardboard box beside the mattress and picked it up. Caller ID said Steve.

“Hey,” said Bruce.

There was a roaring sound over the phone. “Sorry, I’m on my bike,” said Steve.

“What did you do about the déjà vu?”

Steve laughed. “It mostly went away by day thirteen.”

“Good to know,” said Bruce.

“Thor’s awake.”

“Is he okay?”

“Pepper says he seems weak,” said Steve. “But he’s walking and talking. I was on my way to Stark Tower. Wanna come?”

“I’m not on your way,” said Bruce.

“Thought you’d like a motorcycle better than a subway,” said Steve.

“Do I need to be there?”

“Remember what happened when we opened up the portal?”

“Yeah.”

“Thor thinks he has an explanation,” said Steve, so Bruce said okay.

*

After time began to move normally again, Iron Man had carried Thor’s prone body back to Stark Tower. Natasha had appeared with a helicopter on the work site, and had taken Jane, Darcy, and Pepper to the Tower also, leaving Steve, Pepper, and Janet to deal with the aftermath of the reactor’s success.

Once at the Tower, Tony took Thor to one of the medical labs. Then he went back to the site to deal with crowd control and clean up, while Bruce ran some diagnostics on Thor. Natasha gave Bruce a tablet with the full extent of what they had on Asgardian physiology. It was not a lot, but more than Bruce expected. They must have had an opportunity to test Thor at some point, or else they had run tests on Loki when they’d had him on the helicarrier.

Natasha helped Bruce get Thor’s armor off, and Bruce ran the tests he knew how to do without having to lift Thor’s body. Tony had set Thor on a mobile cot, but he was too heavy to lift into other positions. According to the medical equipment in one of Tony’s D Labs, Thor’s body processes were as normal as Bruce knew how to discover. His heart and breathing rate all seemed to be the equivalent of what would have been, in a human, simply a deep slumber.

“He told me that his father goes to sleep sometimes.” Jane looked down at Thor’s still body, obviously holding back tears. “He said it’s a way to . . . regain strength.”

Natasha took the tablet back from Bruce. “Did he say how long it takes?”

Jane shook her head.

“He’s gonna wake up,” said Darcy.

“You don’t know that.” Jane put her hand in the center of Thor’s chest. “He could be . . .”

“He’s not dead.” Darcy put her arm around Jane. “He totally fought that big metal dude; do you remember? He’s not dead. He’s just doing that Odinsleep thing, and when he wakes up—think about it this way,” said Darcy. “We get to see him naked.”

“His skin feels just like yours,” said Jane.

“You can touch me,” said Darcy. “You can totally touch me. I’m totally awake.”

Bruce turned away, because Thor looked like a living, breathing statue. He had sacrificed himself for them, and Jane just looked so sad, like a painting of a queen, with a dead warrior in a boat at her feet. Darcy looked pale and very, very much like she wanted Jane to touch her, as though she would have done anything, if it would have only stopped her tears.

Natasha followed Bruce outside. “I should go,” she said.

“Where do you spend all day?”

“What?”

“July fourth,” said Bruce. “You drop me off, but when Clint gets there to replace you—I never knew where you went.”

The corner of Natasha’s mouth went in. “Would you believe it if I told you I was hauling cargo?”

“No.”

The corner went in further, like a dimple. “Hauling cargo, Bruce.”

“You kept your promise to me.”

The smile faded, and Natasha turned around. “I should—”

Bruce caught her arm. “You never broke it.” She glanced at where his hand was on her arm, and Bruce didn’t know what he was doing. Maybe it was because the reactor had worked, because this day was finally over—his hand was sliding down into hers.

She pulled away. “I break everything I touch.”

“No, you—”

“What happened, when the reactor worked?” She tilted her head.

“What?”

“There was lightning, and then the sky went black. Then everything was blue—what happened to you?”

Bruce shook his head. “Nothing.”

“That’s not what happened to everyone else.”

Bruce’s brows rose. “You’ve talked to everyone?”

“I’ve talked to everyone who matters.”

Bruce tried to figure out whether she meant she’d talked to three people, or just two. “I think I dreamed,” he said finally.

Natasha angled her face away so he couldn’t see her expression. “So did I.”

“Were they . . .” Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. He didn’t know how to ask. “Were they good dreams?”

“Were yours?”

“I don’t know,” said Bruce. In the last two, he hadn’t been the Hulk.

“There was one.” Natasha’s head was still tipped down, her red hair a tumble, brushing her chin. “It was the first time I remember not feeling afraid. The first time since I was a little girl.” She looked up, and her hair went back. “I had killed everyone I know.”

“Natasha—”

“I’m going to go see Nick.” Natasha turned around. “You take care, Bruce.”

She left him there, and for the first time, it occurred to Bruce that with the time loop, every single day was a clean slate. Natasha hadn’t necessarily wanted a tomorrow.

*

Nearly everyone reported strange dreams between the time the Flux Accelerator opened up the fabric of the universe, and the day returned to normal. Most people said that they had felt like themselves, but there were strange differences.

When Steve and Bruce got to Stark Tower on Monday, July eighth, Thor, Jane, Darcy, Tony, and Pepper were all there. Thor was wearing human clothes—someone must have bought them for him, since Tony’s couldn’t possibly have fit. It was strange to see him that way, looking more like just some huge athlete—maybe a body-builder—than a warrior from another century. He moved slowly and a little stiffly, but otherwise seemed fine.

“What I want to know is,” Darcy said, “where was the world of shrimp?”

“So what you’re saying is—those were other dimensions?” Steve asked.

“We all saw Star Trek Reboot.” Darcy looked around. “Tell me we all saw Star Trek Reboot. If you all can’t get Buffy the Vampire Slayer references you should at least be able to get—”

“This was why the days were different,” Bruce said. He held a book that Jane had given him. Small, bound with black leather, it held some pictures drawn in a fluid, somewhat decorative style. Around the drawings, Jane had made notations in her spiky, cramped script, explaining in scientific terms the concepts Thor had explained to her.

Bruce glanced up; everyone had turned to look at him. “Time is three dimensional,” he said. “It made sense to an extent, but I kept thinking that if a moment isn’t a point—it’s an infinite line—wouldn’t it still be the same moment? Even if the Tesseract opened our consciousness to the fact that we were repeating ourselves, we should’ve been stuck doing the exact same things every day. Instead, we could make different choices. We should have been locked into repeating the same actions over and over again, unless . . .”

“The multiverse,” said Jane.

“Multiverse?” said Pepper.

“It’s an idea in theoretical physics,” said Jane. And sci-fi, Bruce silently added, but Jane went on, “The idea that every instant contains infinite possibilities, and that each of those possibilities spawns another universe.”

“Yes,” said Thor, looking a little relieved. “These are the leaves of the Tree—the hœgr plane.”

“You’re saying there are other universes?” said Pepper.

“An infinite variety,” said Thor.

“We were traveling through universes,” said Tony. “Every day that repeated.”

“And every day that repeated spawned yet another universe,” said Jane.

Bruce thought about the day when he had Hulked.

“That was what we saw then,” said Steve. “Possibilities.”

“That’s all they were.” Tony didn’t look at Steve. “Those were other universes. They can’t happen.”

“But they could, couldn’t they?” said Steve.

Tony looked annoyed. “The possibilities that spawned those universes are long gone. Those universes are on a separate track than us. They have nothing to do with us.”

“Unless someone travels there,” Jane pointed out.

Steve said, “Can someone—”

“We destroyed the reactor, Steve.” Tony’s voice was sharp enough that Bruce wondered what Tony had seen, in his alternate universes. “No one can travel anywhere but here.”

On the morning of July sixth, Tony, Steve, operatives from S.H.I.E.L.D., Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes, and a small team of the United States Air Force had supervised the destruction of the reactor. While crews were still cleaning up the equipment, machinery, metal, and other raw materials, there was nothing viable left of the reactor but the photographs that had been taken on that final day.

Tony hadn’t, however, destroyed the Flux Accelerator. “He says it saved our lives,” Steve told Bruce, and Bruce hadn’t argued the point.

“Speaking of travel, I must soon return to Asgard.” Thor stood up.

Jane wasn’t looking at him.

Going over to the bar, Thor picked up his hammer, which was resting on top of the device that held the Tesseract. “Our friends have told me that you wielded this,” said Thor, turning back to Steve.

Tony stood up and left the room.

“Wield would be a strong word,” said Steve.

“I would like to see this feat for myself,” said Thor.

“Er.” Steve looked around at everyone. “It’s not a feat, really. I mean, it’s really heavy, but I can’t call the lightning, if that is what you are asking.”

“I’m asking you to catch.” Thor threw the hammer, and Steve caught it by the handle easily.

“That could have ended badly,” Darcy observed, her voice bland.

Thor stared at Steve, his face a picture of confusion. “It is most strange.”

“Um,” said Steve. “So, there’s something I’m missing?”

Thor shook his head. “It is written that only one who is worthy may wield that weapon.”

“But I can’t—”

“He means no one but you can even lift it,” Darcy clarified. “And you can be sure I tried a whole bunch.”

Steve’s face started to go pink. “I’m not really . . .” In a moment, he might actually begin to stammer.

Bruce slipped out of the apartment, away from the others.

Tony was standing out on the veranda. The wind should have been furious up here, but the architecture was genius, blocking most of the air currents coming from off the water. Tony stood by the ledge, a glass in his hand. He didn’t even turn around when he said, “Like Steve’s parlor trick?”

“I guess it’s handy.”

Tony snorted, and took a sip of the amber liquid in his glass.

“I have bad experiences with people who hide their liquor around the house,” said Bruce.

“That isn’t going to work on me again.” In direct opposition to his words, Tony poured the rest of the liquid over the side of the balustrade.

“That’s probably going to hit someone on the head,” Bruce pointed out.

“It’s a long way down,” Tony said. “Still thinking about jumping off?”

Bruce shook his head. “Not really.”

“Good.”

“What’d you see in those other universes?”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

Bruce looked over the edge. Down below, the cars looked tiny. It was Monday; people were already back at work. “I saw Ho Yinsin,” Bruce said.

Tony glanced at him quickly, then away.

“I was a scientist,” Bruce went on. “I’d never made the Hulk. I’d married Betty, but she died. And Yinsin said . . . he told me that I could have been something more.”

Tony was quiet for so long, Bruce thought he wasn’t going to speak. When he did, he was looking down at the cars. His expression looked as though he couldn’t even see them. “I was something more, in mine,” said Tony.

“You’re something now,” said Bruce.

“I know that.” An expression Bruce couldn’t interpret flashed across Tony’s face, then away. “Sometimes I feel like I’m pulling this world up by my fucking fingernails.”

Bruce looked down at the cars.

“Like I’m taking it somewhere it doesn’t even want to go,” said Tony.

Bruce didn’t want to think about where Tony wanted to take the world; he didn’t want to think about how it probably wasn’t somewhere Bruce wanted to go either. He wanted Tony to be happy, he realized, because he himself never really would be. Both of them had a vision of what the world could be; it was just getting there that was so different for each of them. “You saved this world,” was what Bruce said instead.

“Just another day,” said Tony.

“Tony, you’ve never failed at anything.”

Tony turned to stare at him.

“I may not think that everything you do is right,” said Bruce, “but I don’t think you’re wrong, either. What you did with that nuke last year wasn’t wrong. I just couldn’t have done it.”

“What I did with that nuke,” said Tony, and didn’t say anything else.

“We’re living in your genre now,” Bruce said.

Tony looked back down at the cars. After a long while, his hand came out and rested on the small of Bruce’s back. Bruce could feel the heat of it.

He could still feel it when Steve opened the glass door to the veranda. “Pepper says you should come inside,” he said.

Bruce and Tony went inside.